Nintendo's fab Donkey Kong Country sales

Plus eye-popping lifetime sales disclosed.

Image credit: Eurogamer

News by Robert Purchese Associate Editor

Updated on Jan. 28, 2011

In under one month, Donkey Kong Country Returns has trampled to a massive 4.21 million global sales.

Kirby's Epic Yarn - not yet released in Europe - has already amassed 1.38 million sales in Japan and the US.

And Super Mario Galaxy 2 has been bought 6.15 million times since its summer 2010 release.

These numbers tumble from a boring-snoring supplementary money report by Nintendo that only a square-brain would read. Oh. Totals are calculated up to 31st December 2010.

Nintendo singled out first-party games that have crossed the enviable one million mark since April 2010, when its financial year began.

Headline-maker Pokemon Black and White has now clattered to a massive 5.32 million total sales - 5.26 million in Japan alone, after a late mid-September start. (Pokemon Black and White arrives in Europe on 4th March.)

Wii Party, an October release in Europe, has already amassed an impressive 5.07 million sales worldwide.

DS newcomer Art Academy is off to great start too, with 1.52 million sales.

But it was the old-timers that still pulled the biggest strings for Nintendo. New Super Mario Bros. shifted 3.73 million copies on DS from April to December while New Super Mario Bros. Wii shifted 6.58 million copies.

Similarly, Mario Kart DS pulled in 2.8 million sales while Mario Kart Wii attracted 3.95 million.

Wii Fit Plus, meanwhile, flogged a whopping 5.07 million units. The number of Wii balance boards sold during those nine months was 4.5 million. And the global total of big plastic balance boards in homes around the world now exceeds 34 million! Suddenly, doing press-ups on an E3 stage doesn't seem so ridiculous.

The original 2007, E3 Wii Fit announcement. 34 million balance boards later...

Japanese sales for Professor Layton and the Unwound Future, which are presumably massive, aren't recorded - Level-5 publishes the game over there. Still, outside of Japan, Professor Layton and the Unwound Future notched 1.87 million sales.

It's a similar story for Dragon Quest IX, which is published by Square Enix in Japan. Sales outside of Japan, however, were 1.02 million.

But perhaps the most alluring curiosity of the boring-snoring money report was lifetime sales of some of Nintendo's biggest games. Not all of the legendary sellers are accounted for, incidentally, just those that can still sell more than one million copies in nine months.

Oh and we've taken Wii Sports out of the list, as it's bundled with Wii consoles here. In case you're wondering, its total is a gargantuan 75.66 million global lifetime sales.

Nintendo DS lifetime sellers (that sold over 1 million copies from April - December 2010):