Mario and Zelda do the business in America, while 3DS and Wii each boast record-breaking performances...

While we don't usually get sales figures from America outside of the monthly NPD chart, Nintendo has been tooting its own horn following a beastly performance over the Black Friday period. Black Friday is the day that follows Thanksgiving every year, and with a traditional boom in purchasing activity that comes with it, it is seen as the start of the Christmas shopping season.

After months of gloom, Nintendo formalised its turnaround with one of its strongest Black Friday performances in years. Nintendo of America confirmed that the media-stylised 3DS 'killer app' Super Mario 3D Land has sold over 500,000 units since its November 11th launch, becoming the fastest-selling portable Mario game ever.

The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword was also there to slice up the record book. Having released on November 20th, it has already sold 535,000 copies in the region, making it the fastest-selling Zelda game in history.

Perhaps the biggest surprise was provided by Wii. The ageing, soon-to-be-succeeded white box enjoyed its biggest Black Friday ever. The system moved a staggering 500,000 units solely on the Black Friday date (though with some stores having pre-Black Friday sales, this is essentially Thursday and Friday). In contrast, 2010 had Wii manage 600,000 units across the entire Black Friday week.

It was looking rosy for 3DS hardware too. The release of Super Mario 3D Land saw sales for the handheld system rise by 49% during the week of November 13th compared to the week of November 6th. More impressive still, Black Friday week - the week of November 20th - saw 3DS sales up 325% over that November 6th figure.

Why didn't Nintendo release actual sales figures for the 3DS hardware? It seems obvious that this would be down to the figure being starkly below the abnormally large Wii figure. Nintendo would probably want to avoid comparing the fledgeling portable to fully-established systems, instead drawing comparisons with the first year of the record-breaking DS. It looks like this is exactly what Nintendo is playing up - 3DS has now already surpassed the 2.37 million units reached by the original DS in its first full-year on shelves in the United States.

Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime had this to say:

"What this has been able to do is drive our Nintendo 3DS business in only eight months to surpass the full first year volume of the original DS and we still have the bulk of the holiday to go... [A]nd we still have the launch of Mario Kart 7 to continue driving our full-year sales on Nintendo 3DS."