November 28^th, 2002 (12:00am) - After waiting eight years for a return visit from their favorite video game heroine, a quarter million Nintendo GameCube owners in North America purchased the hit title Metroid Prime in its first week of availability.

Coupled with the concurrent launch of Capcom’s Resident Evil Zero, also a Nintendo GameCube exclusive, well over half a million teen and older gamers will have purchased the two new games by the end of Thanksgiving weekend.

The appeal of these and other popular Nintendo GameCube titles has boosted Nintendo GameCube into second place in total system sales so far in November, according to a number of retailers.

"While Nintendo retains its legacy as the destination of choice for family gamers, we’re also making substantial inroads with more mature players," says Peter MacDougall, executive vice president, sales and marketing, Nintendo of America Inc. "Both of these games are selling through at rates well beyond any game launched this year for Microsoft Xbox, which is skewed almost exclusively at older players."

In addition, Metroid Prime is selling through at a unit rate approximately 50 percent higher than Microsoft’s Xbox Live online service. Both products retail at an identical MSRP ($49.95), and debuted simultaneously in the market.

Meanwhile, sales of the Game Boy Advance title Metroid Fusion, which is designed to interact with its Nintendo GameCube counterpart, have exceeded 100,000 units in the same period of time. Both games feature the eerie solitude and claustrophobic first person exploration that the original Metroid games first demonstrated in the ’80s.