7 copies of the same game mysteriously appear on the PS Store in Japan
Written by. Nick Mosier based on the original Japanese article (original article’s publication date: 2022-06-08 13:13 JST)
The PlayStation Store in Japan currently has 7 copies of the same game called Super Impossible Road available on its storefront, as pointed out by Twitter user Renka. Between the PS4’s three copies and the PS5’s four copies it makes for a comical sight considering they’re all almost identical. So what’s going on?
Super Impossible Road is a game with a futuristic Sci-Fi look where players control a mechanical ball. The goal is to roll the ball across a thin rail to reach the goal and possibly find big shortcuts along the way. Super Impossible Road released on Steam in May of 2016, on iOS in September of 2019, and on the Nintendo Switch in December of 2021. The game also just recently launched on the PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S on June 8.
But something seems a little off with the PS4 and PS5 versions of the game. On the PlayStation Store there are three games titled Super Impossible Road for PS4 and four games with the title on PS5. They’re all the same price and support the same languages so what’s happening here? By taking a closer look at the URLs we may be able to infer just what’s going on.
Looking at each URL on the PS Store, we can see a product number listed after the /product/ section. Let’s check the PS5 versions. Each one has a different set of letters from UP, EP, HP, and JP at the beginning of the product number, with those letters meant to represent a region. UP refers to North America, EP refers to Europe, HP refers to Asia, and JP refers to Japan. In other words, each region’s version is displayed simultaneously on Japan’s PS Store.
The UP version is likely the same version being sold on the North American PS Store as the product numbers match across both stores. It’s just that the PS Store in Japan is also selling versions for multiple other regions across two platforms causing some disorder on the storefront. While only conjecture, there may have been an issue during the application process that caused this gathering of the games.
The PS Store in Japan recently began allowing games that use the IARC rating system to be sold, opening the door for many more games to come to the platform (related article). But Super Impossible Road received a CERO rating, so it doesn’t seem related to the change regarding IARC. It will likely be fixed soon but it’s an odd occurrence. If you really want to support the developer or publisher, now is the time to do it since you can buy 7 copies of the game.
Super Impossible Road is now available on the PlayStation Store with a PS4 and PS5 version. The game is also available on Xbox, Nintendo Switch, PC, and the App Store.
