possibly Virgin Isles as I think that is classed as a part of the UK, but my Geography does suck, and I could be completely wrong.

And I thought it was part of the USA! Turns out there is the British Virgin Islands and also the US V.I.

Unfortunately I wasn't able to find out which tv system (pal / ntsc) they use could be either or both depending on which territory it is. The V for Virgin Islands theory would require that they use pal down there, naturally.

I doubt it myself because EUV code exists and the V.I. isn't large enough a market that they would be inclined to include it like "all of Europe and also the Virgin Islands".. but that's just my opinion.

Also there are many other european terrirtories around the world.

Region codes only contain two characters, and in case of  "UK" they most likely added a third character for Version imho to fit the 3-letter-schema on those serials, same as they did to US and usa as a widely used akronym.

Just my thought.

I don't think in UKV the V stands for Version, for example Spanish disc use a three letter code SPA, and German discs use GER, so I'm pretty sure V stands for something to do with a Country, possibly Virgin Isles as I think that is classed as a part of the UK, but my Geography does suck, and I could be completely wrong.

Are we talking about UKV on discs, or packaging?

I know there are multilingual UKV games which suggests they were intended for Europe rather than UK only, but who knows for sure.

I've got one multilingual EUV game. Not sure if that's supposed to be the same V as in UKV, or what the difference is if any from EUR.

Both USA & USZ covers will say they are for "USA, Canada, Mexico and Latin America." Many American games don't show a region code at all but still say the same thing, although they usually don't have the trilingual back cover like USA/USZ do.

The rare MDE code is for Singapore, Malaysia, UAE, Saudia Arabia. How you get MDE from that is beyond me..

So who knows what the V or Z stand for really, or whether they are reliable for determining the actual region of publication. It is an interesting topic though. Please post if you discover a definitive answer.