The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening tops UK charts

The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening for Nintendo Switch has reached the top spot in the UK retail sales chart, pushing Borderlands 3 down into second.

The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening is a remake of the original title, which was released in 1993 for the GameBoy. The remake was developed by Grezzo, the company which also handled the ports of fellow Zelda titles, Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask, to the Nintendo 3DS. Link’s Awakening is Grezzo’s biggest UK launch in history, passing their previous record, set by Ocarina of Time, by 27 percent.

This is the third time that a Legend of Zelda game has been at the top of the retail sales chart in the UK. The last game in the franchise to top the UK retail charts was The Legend of Zelda: WindWaker for Nintendo GameCube. Prior to that it was The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time for the Nintendo 64, which topped the charts just before Christmas in 1998. Ocarina of Time sold so well in this period that Nintendo had to airlift more copies to stores after they sold out.

Link’s Awakening also beats Super Mario Maker 2 as the fastest selling Nintendo Switch game for the year so far. The game still hasn’t surpassed the biggest Nintendo Switch launch in the UK, which was for The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. However, the launch of Link’s Awakening did give Breath of the Wild a sales boost of 22 percent over the past week, pushing it up to sixteenth place in the UK retail sales chart.

The launch of the Nintendo Switch Lite, a new smaller version of the Nintendo Switch aimed at gamers who want a more portable console, caused sales boosts in a number of games this week. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe Edition rose to third place with a sales increase of 23 percent week-on-week. Super Smash Bros Ultimate now sits in eighteenth with a week-on-week sales boost of 18 percent. Finally, Super Mario Odyssey also saw a sales increase of 18 percent week-on-week, rising to twenty fourth place in the chart.

Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch Remastered launched for Nintendo Switch and PS4 last week. The Switch version debuted at twenty third in the chart, while the PS4 version entered slightly lower down in twenty sixth.

Despite Borderlands 3 being the fastest selling game in the UK for 2019 so far, it’s dropped to second place in the chart with a sales drop of 69 percent week-on-week. Gears 5 saw a week-on-week drop in sales of 74 percent, causing it to fall to fourth place in the chart. Similarly, Efootball PES 2019 saw a week-on-week sales drop of 73 percent, falling to fifth place. Finally, Greedfall dropped from fifth place to twenty eighth with a week-on-week sales decrease of 78 percent.

The only other new release for the week was Truck Driver from Soedesco, which debuted in eleventh place. Meanwhile, Ubisoft’s The Division 2 saw the biggest sales increase for the week thanks to some promotional pricing, rising to sixth from twentieth with week-on-week sales rising by 114 percent.

A more extended list of top sellers can be found here.