Resident Evil I (Simplified Chinese Version) (Open Sesame)

Notes

Ubi Soft Shanghai was Capcom's licensed partner to release PC games in China around the turn of the millennium. They released official versions of several Resident Evil and Dino Crisis games. All the discs were pressed by Shanghai United Optical Disc Co., Ltd., identified by an IFPI code starting with Y1 followed by two digits. The pressing plant was a joint venture between China Record Shanghai Corporation and two Japanese partners, Memory-Tech Corporation and Daiichi Kosho Co., Ltd.

The price of games are printed on the actual game boxes in China. If unsold stock or old games are to be sold at a budget price, they have to be repackaged. This is were Beijing Zhengpu Technology Development Co., Ltd. comes in. On 2001.08.20 they launched their Open Sesame budget line, and on 2002.12.24 they launched their Allah's Lamp budget line. The difference between the two is in the packaging, with Open Sesame being the simplest and cheapest, almost as cheap as pirate releases. Indeed part of the philosophy was to combat pirated games. The Allah's Lamp games came in keep cases and were about twice as expensive.

In the beginning, several legitimate publishers cooperated with Zhengpu Technology. Typically old stock of games which had already been on sale for a few years were sent to them, and they repackaged the discs and sold them at a budget price. These can be identified as legitimate releases by comparing the discs to the original Ubi Soft releases. However, over time the company evolved into just another pirate company. If the discs are no longer identical to the original releases, it is impossible to know whether they had an agreement with the publishers to press more discs, or if the agreement had expired and the reprints are unofficial.

Over time more and more lawsuits were filed against the company, but it was finally a case of tax evasion and bribery which made it go out of business in 2008.

The particular game on this page appears to be genuine, despite the terrible sleeve artwork. The disc is the same as the original Ubi Soft release, and was pressed by the same pressing plant. The disc came in a loose, black tray inside a sleeve with a holographic Zhengpu sticker.

Matrix

• UBI-EVIL-1(CN) A IFPI L026 (incomplete)
• ifpi Y108

Publication details

format

PC CD-ROM retail game

catalog #

ISBN 7-900011-39-0/G.39

disc(s) made in

artwork made in

released in

release date

(?)

publisher

Zhengpu Technology/ Ubi Soft