U.S. Sonic with UPC sells for $981.33

[TonyTheTiger]

Sorry, I missed the 'ninja edit'

But you are saying that it's not a US release because of the sticker, although you concede is was intended to be sold in the States, correct?

What I was saying is that something can be sold somewhere, with publisher intent to do so, yet still be a mere import. Dead horse here but...Radiant Silvergun. Of course there was "intent" to sell Sonic. That was never part of the problem. Whether or not the mere intent to sell an item from a different region automatically converts the game into a local copy is what was up for debate, and what changes to the item (if any) are necessary to complete the transformation.

Am I missing something here? The factory that makes Oreos, with all kinds of boxes they put them in. Are you going to say that the Oreos shipped to France weren't really intended for France because the difference is just a box?

Well that was the basis for my alternate proposition of why Radiant Silvergun or Shenmue II can't qualify as American when they essentially had the same treatment. Let's say you're right about the Oreo thing there and Sonic, too. My original argument was that, if that is the case, then why aren't we counting other things as separate U.S. releases, too? I said before that Sonic being American is something I can at least somewhat accept but what I couldn't accept was the line drawn between Sonic and every other officially distributed import. It sounded arbitrary to me. My argument could be reduced to "Call Sonic U.S. if you want, but then you better call a lot of things U.S., too, because there's no meaningful difference."

But since the revelation of Sega taking a far greater interest in UPC codes than other publishers, there's certainly more wiggle room for that line to exist, I suppose. Although I did look up Shenmue II and the European UPC does not follow the trend.