Not always was sales information so available, its not like today when we get numbers every week and have an archive of over 15 years of data, no there was a time when sales data was scarce and poorly archived, most of it its now lost or is in some obscured and probably defunct Japanese site, such is the case with hardware numbers, the only well kept prior to 2000 is Dreamcast data and prior to that there's next to nothing.
However there is some software charts that have managed to survive, I was able to find a Japanese site with Famitsu's Top 30 from 1996 up to 2003, after that we have western sites archiving from then to today, right now I'm in the process of translating all that data, its hard work, about 200 weeks of data each with 30 games and everything has to be painstakingly translated one by one.
This site however actually has some data prior to 1996 which is what's here, what you're about to see its what I have translate so far, which is all the data from 1994 and prior to that, 1995 data is more complete so that's bound to take some time, what's here its some rather rare information, even when checking with the sales agers of Japan in 2ch not many of them had this data so consider yourself lucky to see this, what's more interesting is that this might be the only place to see this data in English, so here:
If its marked on blue it means it was released on that period, release date is also a little messed up, that was directly copy pasted from the site and in some cases its in the dd/mm/yyyy format while sometimes its in mm/dd/yyyy format.
No actual numbers just yet, those will take a few more years to come up.
Software on Nintendo hardware dominate the charts for a long time, plenty of weeks are only about them, its a rare occurrence to see Mega Drive or PC Engine games show up.
#4 here is actually Aguri Suzuki F-1 Super Driving, my mistake.
1994, the Sega Saturn and the PlayStation are about to launch, Nintendo's dominance at the home console market it's at an end.
Oldest known week with actual data, Saturn has already been released, nonetheless the Super Famicom and Donkey Kong Country will top the holiday charts.
PlayStation is out as well, while it'd go on to be the dominant force through the upcoming years it doesn't cause much effect on its launch, there's no stopping Donkey Kong.
1994 comes at an end, this is 2 weeks of tracking, Donkey Kong wins.
So yeah.
:T
