Wii Fit has cemented its position on the top of the UK charts by, er, dropping 17% of sales from last week, but nevertheless selling enough to keep Call of Duty in runner-up spot, while EA’s definitely-better-than-PES-this-year FIFA 09 rises to third position. But the big mover on this week’s chart is Professor Layton and the Curious Village, with more shops carrying stock of the in-demand puzzler, pushing its sales up 54% on last week. Can it climb even higher?

Elsewhere, Mario Kart Wii sees a small increase in sales at number six, while Wii Play and My Fitness Coach both drop a place each. EA might be disappointed by the performance of SimAnimals, which only managed to reach number sixteen on the Wii Full-Price chart, though it might well rise next week as Wii software tends to do.

Wii Fit’s position makes it Nintendo’s joint second longest-lasting number one, with a total of seven weeks at the top, matching Pokemon Gold which achieved the same feat eight years ago. It still has some way to go to beat Pokemon Yellow one year earlier, which managed a whopping ten weeks at the summit.

Will Wii Fit make it four consecutive weeks on top? Burnout Paradise: The Ultimate Box and Cooking Mama 2: World Kitchen probably represent its strongest challengers next week - I can’t see New Play Control! Pikmin toppling the casual-pleaser, though stranger things have happened. Tune in next week to find out. Or, for a more detailed run-down of the All-Formats Top 40, click here.

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Top Five time, then, and one of these entries will shock you to your very bones. Perhaps. It’ll more likely make you all go ‘uh?’ with confusion, as you probably won’t have heard of the game in question. Oh, and there’s no Chrono Trigger because I haven’t played it yet. And because I’m giving it a run at the number one slot for next year. Anyway, without further ado, here are my five best DS games of 2008. Read on, and feel free to vent your anger - or offer your congratulations at my excellent taste - in the comments thread below.

5. Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword

Basically, the best controls on the DS since Phantom Hourglass. Gaiden might not have seemed a natural fit for the handheld (and indeed its sales seem to suggest that potential purchasers dismissed it for that very reason), but Dragon Sword is a bit of a corker. It’s a little repetitive at times, but performing Izuna Drops with just a couple of swift stylus flicks feels incredibly empowering and wonderfully intuitive. Its combat is every bit as fluid and enjoyable to watch as its console cousins, which is quite some achievement. Looks a million dollars, too.

4. Trauma Center: Under The Knife 2

Amazingly, only the second most palm-sweatingly panic-inducing game on the DS this year. TC:UTK2 didn’t quite have the thrill of the new the original had, but with a slightly fairer difficulty curve, some excellent borrows from the Wii games and that really really brilliant level where you’re operating by torchlight in the back of a moving car make this the tightest, most refined game in the series to date. It misses the co-op of Wii title New Blood and that game’s online scoreboards (definitely the most glaring omission) but a compelling story and the return of franchise favourites Derek and Angie just about make it the best entry point to the series - if you’ve not tried Trauma Center before, here’s the place to start.

3. Air Traffic Chaos

Air Traffic Whatnow?, more like. Sure, you might not have heard of it. And not, it’s not exactly had many raves from the critics who did bother to review it. But Air Traffic Chaos offers two things which make it so good. Firstly, it’s an entirely fresh approach to the strategy genre, feeling both familiar in its sense of escalating challenge and very different in its setting and its requirements of the player. Secondly, it’s utterly daunting in that it forces you into doing those things us men are normally so terrible at - multi-tasking and snap decision-making. In other words, Air Traffic Chaos makes a better man out of you. The fairer sex would probably find it comparatively easy, because they can do those sort of things. But this left me in a state of near-constant tension. In a really, really good way. Hugely compelling and addictive, you owe it to your DS to pick up a copy of this unheralded gem.

2. Professor Layton and the Curious Village

Best. Twist. Ever. Besides a story reveal that’s right up there with ‘Bruce Willis is a ghost’ and ‘it’s Gwyneth’s head in a box’, Layton had lots more to offer those tempted into uncovering the secret of titular hamlet St. Mystere. With a cast of memorable characters, some truly charming presentation - Studio Ghibli by way of Belleville Rendez-vous - were it not for its puzzles, Level 5’s cracker would still have plenty to recommend it. But coupled with those fiendish brain-teasers - often so cleverly worded that you’d kick yourself when the answer finally revealed itself - it transcended its genre origins to become a game which both casual and hardcore embraced warmly. No wonder it’s sold out everywhere. Now let’s see the second and third games in 2009 please, Nintendo.

 1. The World Ends With You

 

I’ve probably said enough about TWEWY this year to leave this entry entirely blank. But its achievements really do deserve to be celebrated - if only because it was so shamefully ignored by the gaming public when it was released. TWEWY is a true RPG classic - in many ways it’s like a modern day Chrono Trigger, in that it dares to eschew genre convention to forge its own path, with fresh ideas sprinkled liberally throughout this twenty-hour adventure. Its Shibuya setting is beautifully realised, its characters relatable, its story gripping and its unique battle system (after a period of adjustment) constantly surprising and refreshingly different. And it’s a game with a message - one that’s put across very intelligently, and absolutely not hammered home with all the subtlety of your average Kojima monologue. Its endgame is remarkable too - offering a wealth of additional content once you’re done with the main story, including one self-referential extra which shows it’s not afraid to laugh at itself. For this, and for many other reasons, TWEWY is easily the DS game of the year, and one of the top three games on the handheld full stop. If, for some reason, you’ve not played it yet, then get it added to your Christmas list pronto.

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Curious DS owners wishing to get their hands on D mystery-puzzler Professor Layton are finding this fantastic game particularly hard to come by at the moment. With store shelves empty, and copies on Amazon.com changing hands for a staggering £99  - heck, even Play.com’s cheapest copy weighs in at £48.95 - it seems that once again Nintendo has undershipped one of its key titles over the winter period.

I spoke to Nintendo UK PR guru Rob Saunders about the situation, and he insisted that Nintendo hadn’t underestimated how well the game would sell, saying “no, we don’t manufacture the same number of games for every title we release - we produce and bring to market quantities based on retail orders we receive”. So there you go: it’s the retailers’ fault, apparently.

Saunders also assured me that shops would be receiving more stocks before Christmas. “Yes, stock is coming in every week to all retailers across the UK,” he asserted.

Sadly, he was a little less forthcoming when asked whether we could expect the second and third games in the series to be localised for Europe. “We’ve not announced any plans at this time” was the rather predictable response.

So, your best bet if you wish to get your hands on a copy of the game before Christmas is to speak to your retailer of choice and ask whether they’d be prepared to reserve you a copy once stock arrives. It seems some shops may well offer this service (from anecdotal information), so ask around and you might just be able to get your hands on a title that’s going to be as rare as uncooked turkey this yuletide.

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