Football Manager 2008 Makes Charts

Sega's management sim beats out FIFA, Halo and everything else.

To many people Football Manager 2008 and its ilk look more like elaborate spreadsheets than fun, but for the thousands of people who picked the game up this weekend, it's a tool that allows them to prove they can lead a team to victory.

And so it was that Sega's football management sim pulled off a victory, forcing FIFA 08 from the top of the chart for the week and holding down Halo 3 too.

Also debuting strong was Link's new portable adventure, Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass for the DS. No doubt helped along by the omnipresent TV advertising campaign, the green-clothed hero's new game was the second most popular single game of the week and placed fourth on the All Formats chart.

Beating Zelda on that chart was The Orange Box, the clumsily named collection of all the Half-Life 2 games to date, including Episode Two, and Portal and Team Fortress 2 as well.

The only other new game to make the Top 20 this week is a video game spin-off from Disney's multimedia hit High School Musical.

The Top 20 games across all formats for the week ending 20 October, as determined by Chart Track, are below:

1. Football Manager 2008 (Sega)
2. FIFA 08 (EA)
3. The Orange Box (EA)
4. Legend Of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass (Nintendo)
5. Halo 3 (Microsoft)
6. Project Gotham Racing 4 (Microsoft)
7. Ratatouille (THQ)
8. Tiger Woods PGA Tour 08 (EA)
9. Resistance: Fall Of Man (Sony)
10. Crash Of The Titans (Sierra)
11. MySims (EA)
12. Big Brain Academy: Wii Degree (Nintendo)
13. Cooking Mama (505)
14. Heavenly Sword (Sony)
15. Wii Play (Nintendo)
16. MotorStorm (Sony)
17. Dr Kawashima's Brain Training (Nintendo)
18. High School Musical: Makin' The Cut! (Disney)
19. More Brain Training From Dr Kawashima (Nintendo)
20. Juiced 2: Hot Import Nights (THQ)

Alex Wollenschlaeger
Editor, Kikizo