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Forums - Sales Discussion - 4 Popular Series You May Have Forgotten About

On VGChartz, we occassionally discuss the sales figures of games. Which means that as a community, we tend to be a bit better informed about which games have sold better or worse over the years. So recently, after looking up what I thought was a fairly niche series, I was surprised to discover that it was a major hit with millions of sales.

In No Particular Order

 

Jikkyou Powerful Pro

Also known as Power Pros outside of Japan, this is a Konami series of baseball games, this series is apparently known for its large-headed characters and arcade-esque gameplay (I don't actually know enough about baseball to confirm what artistic liberties are being taken). The series started way back in 1994 on the Super Famicom, and has been receiving new installments for various platforms up through the current day, with the last iteration being released in December 2016. Of course, only two installments were ever exported to America, aka the other place in the world where baseball is a thing, and they didn't get a great reception, so this is basically a Japan exclusive series..

Total - Powerful Pro has sold over 15 million units in Japan alone, with the best-selling installment being 99 Kaimakuban for the PlayStation. For context, that entry is one of the Top 50 for the PlayStation in Japan, selling more than Ridge Racer, Tekken, and Chrono Cross. None of the Top 50 PS2 games in Japan are in the series, but eleven of the games from #51 to #200 are. Two entries are in the Top 30 N64 games, another two are in the Top 50 for PSP, and three are in the PS3's Top 100. Not the biggest series, but it sticks arounnd!

 

Namco Museum

After the CD-ROM became the storage media of choice, but before it became easy to download games onto consoles, compilations of retro games onto a single disc had something of a Golden Age. The Sonic Mega Collection was actually one of the best-selling GameCube game! But for now, Namco Museum.

Namco Museum started back in 1995 with the well-named Volume 1 for the PlayStation, which ported over seven arcade games, mostly from the 1980 to 1982 era. It also featured a sort of Museum where people could see media related to the games in the collection. After the first game's success, Volume 1 lived up to its name, with five volumes released internationally for the PlayStation before Namco made other compilations in the series for the N64, GBA, two for the 6th generation consoles, the PSP, and DS. And although the series has slowed down considerably since the advent of digital distribution, it still gets the ocassional release, including a Switch iteration coming in a couple of weeks.

Total - Namco Museum has sold over 25 million units, not counting digital sales. The GBA iteration has over 4 million sales, making it one of the Top Ten best-selling third party GBA game. The PlayStation Volumes 1 and 3 sold about 4 million apiece, landing them in the Top 30 PS1 games of all time. And as late as the 50th Anniversary edition, released in 2005, the console version sold well over 4 million units. The N64 version outsold Paper Mario.

 

Petz

Petz is like the more obscure cousin of Ubisoft's Imagine series, which I felt was just a bit too well known to qualify for this list. Though the series of pet simulation games technically dates back to a couple of PC games released in the mid to late 90's, the series hit its stride on the DS in 2006 with Dogz. The series would have over 30 games from 2006 to 2009, followed by a few in 2010 and 2011, before disappearing entirely. So yes, it was a lot like Guitar Hero.

Total - A bit complicated. VGChartz claims that the series has over 15 million sales, including three million-sellers on DS, but that does not count the earlier PC games. According to Ubisoft, the series has sold roughly 22 million games.

 

WWE

For those who don't know, WWE is an American Professional Wrestling company. It is often derided for being fake, but this much should be obvious. One guy was an undead cowboy biker who led a cult of other professional wrestlers called the Ministry of Darkness. What's important is that people have been making games under the WWE title since the 80's, including THQ, Take Two,and Acclaim.

Total - Though it is hard to track the sales of games prior to the PlayStation, let alone all of the PC and arcade games, there are no less than 85 million WWE games sold, including those under their former WWF label. On the PlayStation, three of the Top 50 games are WWF games, with Warzone outselling Tomb Raider and Resident Evil in North America. The N64 was similar, with three WWF games in the Top 50 worldwide. In North America, those three games would outsell Pokemon Stadium 2, Banjo-Tooie, and Mario Tennis. There were ten WWE million-seller skus on PlayStation 2, five on each the 360 and PS3, and three on PS4. The most recent game, 2K17, has sold over 2 million since its October release.

 

I am sorry about the YouTube style clickbait, but couldn't think of a better title.



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