UK Charts: NFSU2 enters the record books
New success for EA's Christmas hit as January drought continued to grind by.
Electronic Arts' street racing title Need for Speed Underground 2 has broken a UK chart record by taking its tenth consecutive week at number one, giving it the longest unbroken run ever at the top of the All Formats chart.
This latest success for the title - which was the Christmas No.1 and held off strong competition for the top spot from the likes of Grand Theft Auto San Andreas and EA's own FIFA 2005 - came as the drought of new releases which affected the entire market throughout January continued.
Once again, no new releases entered the Top 40 ranking, with EA's NFL Street 2 and Take 2's various ESPN titles all failing to make a mark in the charts, and the top ten was also largely stagnant - with no change in the top four, and the remainder of the shuffling largely inconsequential.
Not a terribly exciting charts update, then, but next week's promises to inject some fresh blood into the ranking, with the arrival of titles including EA's UEFA Champions League 2004-2005, THQ's SpongeBob SquarePants movie tie-in, and Nintendo's Donkey Kong: Jungle Beat.
Also worth a mention are Tecmo's Project Zero 2: Crimson Butterfly on Xbox and Koei's PS2 title Phantom Brave, both of which have received excellent reviews and will no doubt be hoping to capitalise on the quiet time of year to attract interest.
Also released this week are Capcom's Shadow of Rome (PS2), Sega's Sonic Mega Collection Plus (Xbox / PS2), Take 2's Outlaw Golf 2 (Xbox / PS2), NCSoft's massively multiplayer title City of Heroes (PC) and Rare's THQ-published GBA title, It's Mr Pants.