I bought a Japanese Gunstar Heroes from Yahoo Japan several years ago and it had a "SEGA"-seal on the side so I cannot open it. It looks exactly like this: The game itself looks like brand-new, too (I did not open it) - but of course, many used MD games look like brand-new from the outside. I'm just confused where this sticker (which also looks new, not like it had been reattached) could come from. Has anyone ever seen a Japanese game by Sega for Mega Drive with this seal?
That's the same seal that came on all European SMS & MD games. I don't know if Japanese games used them as well.
Oh yes, they did seal some products before that. Mega CD was sealed, but surprisingly also SG-1000 games were sealed (shrinkwrap), as opposed to the following Mark III-games. I agree that it's a weird thing to stumble upon, but I just have no idea why there is a SEGA sticker on it. Maybe some member here bought a box of brand-new MD-games published by SEGA and can check if they have seals?
Asian Mega Drive games have this sticker sometimes so I'd guess it's just an Asian released game using the Japanese game. There are a few Asian releases which are just the Japanese game.
Oh. Sorry about that. I deleted the post thinking I was being a bit stupid. But if you're right, it's understandable what I thought.
Well i can say the seal is official i still have games with that seal when i bought then back in the day brand new.
Are you referring to Japanese version games? Just doublechecking cause the initial sample picture of MS games could be misleading.
Japanese Virtual Racing also had one of those stickers but who cares, anyway? It's just a sticker that 99% of the time was binned.
not really because I owned a brand new bought from a Japanese gaming store GunStar Heroes that didn't have this sticker. Also these stickers could be easily taken off and re-applied with no noticeable marks or loss of stickiness. They are a pretty poor way of telling.
How do you know it's new if there was no sticker or it was not in a sealed cardboard box full of other Gunstar Heroes? The shop could've simply put a shinpin sticker on it? Of course it's a poor way of telling, but it still is part of the big story and should be preserved. At least having a sticker on the side gets it a lot closer to real "brand-new" than an open "new" copy that theoretically could have been already played for 500 hours without anyone knowing.
that's what I'm getting at. these Sega stickers are not a really good way to say if a game is brand new or not. I could take the one off my Virtual Racing and put it on to another mint looking game and claim it was brand new. Very easy to do. The stickers can also come off or may not have even been applied to games. In fact the only games that had these stickers on every new game were PAL (Maybe US too) Master System games but even then the same uncertain theory applies. The best way to tell if a MD cartridge is brand new is to look at the contacts and any scrape marks on the black plastic of the cartridge.
It's just hard to tell. Maybe my game is really an Asian version? But is there any difference between the Asian and the Japanese version once the sticker is removed? I remember I once bought a new-old-stock Asian version copy of "Crying" and I tried to ask several people with "Japanese" versions and compared scans of the cover and everything, but there was just no difference at all. Every version I ever came across says "For sale and use only in ASIA" on the back, so even that is not of any help.
The "Asian" games that used Japanese covers, carts and manuals are just normal Japanese retail games, no difference at all. I don't even think they bother with the Chinese manual. You get the standard Japanese manual. The only difference are the Sega stickers but even then I can't be sure if they were never used on games sold in Japan other than Virtual Racing. Out of all the Mega Drive games I've bought in Japan that were said to be brand new, only my Asian games had this Sega sticker on them and Japanese Virtual Racing (There is an actual Asian version of VR with a different cover).
I've seen a lot of japanese megadrive games coming out from the factory shipper box and none and a sega sticker. But I haven't seen a factory shipper box of Gunstar Heroes, ever so mystery isn't solved. However, I remember that something like 8 years ago, an UK seller had brand new sega stickers for sell, hundreds of them, right from the factory.
