The Mystery of Kenzan

I forgot to mention that my copy of Yakuza Kenzan happened to be a brand new copy still in its shrinkwrap when purchased. I didn't really give it much thought as to why a black label version was still available when the budget edition was released quite some time ago. I did see a lot of japanese games in the game store so it could have been old stock waiting to be cleared. Then I got home and realised something was amiss with my copy as you will soon see here with these pictures.

Now if you look at the earlier post you will notice I stacked my copy of Kenzan next to my japanese import of Yakuza 3. If you are aware of the chronology Kenzan was released before Yakuza 3, in fact it's the first Yakuza game on the ps3 platform from team SEGA. Still with me so far? Good now take a look here at the top of the Yakuza 3 case, it has the old playstation 3 logo embossed onto the case like most old games back when the black label used to be on the side of the cover art.

Now since Kenzan came before 3, the case should also be embossed with the old playstation 3 logo on the top right? That's the weird thing, the case for my copy of Yakuza Kenzan happened to be the new type without the playstation 3 logo on the top despite being shrinkwrapped. This is the official Sony shrinkwrap mind you, where you see the playstation logo on the tape as you peel the plastic off. Now before you jump into any conclusions as to why an old game could end up in a new casing, I must say I also notice a similar copy of Kenzan appearing in another game store so I doubt there's anything fishy going on here. My only plausible explanation for all this is that the game are still being published in their original cover art in Taiwan.