Zelda wakes up the charts

The Legend Of Zelda: The Wind Waker has stormed to the top of the chart, becoming the 12th fastest selling game ever in the process, with estimated sales of around 80,000 in the first weekend on sale in the UK.

The impact on GameCube hardware sales wasn't nearly as dramatic as one would perhaps expect, however, with ChartTrack figures of over 6,000 retailers across the UK reporting GameCube console sales of just under the 5,000 mark – although Nintendo will doubtlessly be keen to push the fact that this was in fact a 125 per cent increase on the week before.

But placed in the context of Xbox selling 87 per cent more than GameCube last week, and PS2 selling 162 per cent more than Nintendo's underperforming console, it's fair to say that Nintendo still has plenty of work to do to convince the game buying public.

Meanwhile, back in the All Formats software chart, Rockstar's Midnight Club II debuted strongly at No.3, although still being outsold by Ubi Soft's Splinter Cell, which slips to No.2 this week, although remains the top selling PS2 title.

Elsewhere, there wasn't a huge amount of movement in the charts, with the release of the X-Men 2 movie failing to tempt gamers into parting with £40, with Activision's rather lacklustre game sliding to No.7. Sony's equally average Primal dropped dramatically to No.14 already, despite the frantic discounting.

Disappointingly, The Bitmap Brother's World War II: Frontline has had a dismal start, entering at a dismal No.12 on the PC Full Price chart, and hence nowhere near the All Formats chart – being outsold, rather embarrassingly, by the Student Edition of Office XP.

Namco's Moto GP3 had a quiet start too, entering at No.11 on the PS2 chart, and No.28 on the Full Price All Formats chart, while EA proved that even it has flops occasionally, with NBA Street 2 managing a rather anonymous No.34 on the Full Price chart, despite being released on all three main console formats.

But these failures pale into insignificance stood next to Vivendi's All Format release, BloodRayne, which didn't even trouble any of the main listings, never mind the individual format charts. Oops. We're slightly annoyed that Project Zero didn't even make the Xbox Top 20, however, although we're fairly sure Microsoft devoted Zero to the marketing too, so we shouldn't be surprised.

On a format-by-format basis, the PS2 continues to dominate, the Cube has just one exclusive in the Top 40 (Zelda), the Xbox also just the one (Halo), the PC has six, the GBA two, and the PSone three.

See you next week for more chart related thrills.