The Magic Box: International Videogame News

- Here are the Top 20 Best Selling Console Games in Japan for the first half of the year 2001 (between April 2 to September 30). The top 3 entries are all PlayStation 2 titles, Square's Final Fantasy X outsold all other games with over 2.36 million copies sold, Sony's Gran Turismo 3 has managed to sell over 1.6 million copies in Japan. The Japanese market is mostly captured by PS2 now, GameBoy Advance also captured a decent share in the handheld market, the sales of GBA game titles are actually doing better than GBC titles, despite the GBA is launched less than a year.

1	Final Fantasy X	Square	PS2	RPG	2,363,028
2	Gran Turismo 3 A-Spec	Sony	PS2	Racing	1,633,260
3	Everybody's Golf 3	Sony	PS2	Sports	742,107
4	Devil May Cry	Capcom	PS2	Action	562,803
5	Mariokart Advance	Nintendo	GBA	Racing	489,860
6	Hamster Tarou 2	Nintendo	GBC	Adventure	426,510
7	Yugioh Duel Monsters 5: Expert I	Konami	GBA	Card Battle	393,245
8	From TV Animation One Piece Ground Battle*	Bandai	PS	Fighting	389,680
9	Super Mario Advance*	Nintendo	GBA	Action	380,784
10	Shin Sangoku Musou 2	Koei	PS2	Action	363,413
11	Tear Ring Saga	Enterbrain	PS	SRPG	338,491
12	Dragon Quest Monsters 2: Mysterious Key of Martha: Iru's Adventure	Enix	GBC	RPG	324,556
13	From TV Animation One Piece: Birth of the Pirate Dream	Banpresto	GBC	RPG	300,463
14	Jikkyou Powerful Pro Baseball 2001	Konami	PS	Sports	289,621
15	From TV Animation One Piece: Let's Dash out Pirates	Bandai	PS	RPG	288,766
16	Jikkyou Powerful Pro Baseball 8	Konami	PS2	Sports	287,155
17	Ace Combat 04: Shattered Skies	Namco	PS2	Shooter	275,492
18	Tactic Orge Gaiden: The Knight of Lodis	Nintendo	GBA	SRPG	271,287
19	Dragon Quest Monsters 2: Mysterious Key of Martha: Ruka's Journey*	Enix	GBC	RPG	252,739
20	Pocket Monster Crystal	Nintendo	GBC	RPG	248,721

- Namco has revealed two new characters in their upcoming weapon fighting game Soul Calibur 2. The first is Tarim - maiden of Wind Shrine, who sensed dishonesty from the wind and decided to go out to correct the cause. She uses double diggers as weapon. The second is Nightmare, a returning character from Soul Calibur.

- The total amount of visitors for the Fall 2001 Tokyo Game Show is 129,626, 10% higher than the amount of visitors for the last TGS in spring, but it is still under the expected 150,000 target.

- Sega has highlighted their plans for the next 2 years. They are aiming to sell a total of 35 million copies of game software worldwide by the end of 2003. One concrete tentative plan is reinforcement of the Sega Sports series, because the sports genre make up of 20% of the US market. Sega is planning to promote their "Let's Make" sports series to all major platforms.

- A second point is to use the properties of Sega positively, such as developing an adventure game featuring the Virtua Fighter characters. Other major Sega properties include NiGHTS, D and Enemy Zero. Sega will also continue to improve on their network game series. It was asserted that the "main format" Sega concerns is PlayStation 2, the reason is simple, it has an overwhelming market share. Sega is planning to support the PS2 HDD in their future PS2 titles.

- Sega's Sonic Team and Sega-AM2 will continue to develop for Microsoft's XBox platform, include developing software which make sure of the network system Zone.Com. Sega also mentioned a further reduction on Dreamcast development, Gun Survivor 2: Biohazard Code Veronica will move to PS2; The House of the Dead 3 will move to XBox; Propeller Arena, MS-R for Dreamcast are canceled; Space Channel 5 Part 2, NFL 2K2, NBA 2K2 and WSB 2K2 for Dreamcast will only be sold in Sega's D-Direct online store.

- Sega is planning to port Warp's two classic horror adventure games D and Enemy Zero to the next generation systems, it is still unclear whether the new versions will feature visual enhancements.

- Sega will port the highly popular arcade horse racing game Derby Owner Club to PC, the PC version will be called Derby Owner Club Online, with full network support.

- Sega announced that they are developing the latest work of the Virtua Cop and Outrun for arcade.

- Genki announced Shutokou Online for the next generation system, the latest sequel of their popular racing game, this time the game will have online battle support.

- Hudson will release Momotarou Dentei X: Chapter of Kyuushuu for PS2 in Japan on December 13, for 6800 yen. Bomberman Kart will release on December 20, for 5800 yen. Hudson also announced two new PS2 titles at TGS, DriftChamp is a new racing game and BX Cross is a new bike racing game which is scheduled for release in Spring 2002.

- Genki announced that they will release Kengo 2 for PlayStation 2 in Japan in January 2002.

- Tecmo has released info on all the playable characters in Dead or Alive 3. This time you can perform side stepping by pressing up or down and direction button. There is an Air Throw system as well, you can first knock the opponent to mid-air and have your second character to grab and air throw the opponent. The Expert Hold system allows you to hold and attack the opponent. It is also possible to pursuit the character who collided to the wall. There are 16 playable characters in the game, they are .....

- Genki announced that Zan Kabuki (Kabuki Warriors) for XBox will be released in Japan in February 2002, possibly becoming a launch title for the system.

- Konami announced Jikkyou World Soccer 2002 for GameCube, the latest edition of their highly popular soccer game.

- Nintendo announced that they will release the GameBoy Advance e-Card Reader (model number AGB-010) in Japan on December 1, for 5800 yen. Pokemon e-Card will be the first game to support the e-Card Reader, you can download mini games, short movies and program data from different e-Cards. Each e-Card can hold up to 3360 bytes of data.