UK Charts: Atari Driv3n from pole

Activision's Spider-Man 2 has swung into the number one position in the UK sales charts a week ahead of the opening of the movie, knocking Atari's Driv3r off the top just a fortnight after its launch.

Interestingly, Spider-Man's webslinging antics were propelled to the top by strong performance on the GameCube and Xbox, with the game topping charts on both of those platforms, while the PS2 version of the game lost out to Driv3r in the PS2-only chart.

Compared with the original Spider-Man, the second game sold more than twice as many units in its first week on sale - and it should get a further sales boost next week, following the opening of the movie in Europe on the 15th.

The only other new release in the top 40 chart is Capcom's Onimusha 3: Demon Siege, the critically acclaimed new instalment in the samurai-themed action series, featuring the talents of French actor Jean Reno, which narrowly missed the top ten, debuting at number 11.

In the top ten, Driv3r dropped a single place to number two, while Activision's other movie tie-in, Shrek 2, was pushed back to number three and Sony's Athens 2004 jumped four places to this week's number four as Olympic fever mounts ahead of the Games next month.

The highest ranked Cube and Xbox titles were Spider-Man 2, and unfortunately there's no way of telling which platform the game sold better on. The Game Boy Advance chart saw Sonic Advance 3 taking the top spot, and rising from number 23 to number 14.

The biggest no-shows in this week's chart are the NES Classics Series on the GBA, with not a single one of the £15 retro titles making it into the top 40 All-Formats - although Super Mario Bros. did appear at number five in the GBA chart, making it the best-selling of the eight. Of course, given the bargain basement costs of launching such titles for Nintendo, the company didn't exactly need huge sales to make a profit off the games.

Also in the missing in action list for the week are Sony's Syphon Filter: The Omega Strain (PS2) and SCi's Richard Burns Rally (PS2, Xbox), while there are rather less surprising omissions for Cycling Manager 4 (PC), Risk: Global Domination (PS2) and Uru: The Path of the Shell (PC).

Next week promises to be rather spectacularly quiet; we're meant to be seeing Combat Elite: WWII Paratroopers from Acclaim, but ongoing legal action over the title means that it's unlikely to appear, while Zoo Digital's release of The Suffering on PC, Jaleco's Goblin Commander and Nintendo's Hamtaro: Ham-Ham Games all seem unlikely to set the world alight - leaving Nintendo's superb GBA strategy title Fire Emblem as the stand-out title of the week, although hardly the most likely commercial hit of the year.