The Video Game Critic

Time for another of my condition questions :p

Here are images of two sealed PS2 games; I was wondering if any legitimate factory sealed PS2's seal is ever notably off centre, as shown in image 1? Or whether they should always be reasonably centred, as in image 2?

I can't say for certain about those, but I can say that a few years back I bought a game that was wrapped & looked new, but wasn't. The disc had a fingerprint on it & the manual had a tiny speck of food on one of the pages. I took it back to the store & told them that it wasn't new like they told me it was & wanted my money back. They gave me a hard time & tried to stick to their original story that it was new. I showed them the fingerprint & crumb & told them that they were being dishonest about what they were selling. They begrudgingly gave me my money. They went out of business 2 years later.

Where are you from? PS2 games in the US came in very dark (almost black) blue cases... I don't remember ours having the little seal-strip in them, if anything, they had those annoying sticker-strips across the top, similar to DVDs.

This brings up a (vaguely) interesting topic...region packaging differences. For example, US Nintendo DS cases are fairly thin and black (similar size to 3DS cases). I recently got the game XG Blast (DS) that came in a thicker, translucent, case (European?). I thought that was sort of weird, why the differences between regions?

I am European; in Europe, all official PS2 games have a 'playstation 2' tear strip. Case differences between regions are probably because they are manufactured in different places (i.e it's why we have Nintendo U.S, Nintendo Europe etc).

One does have to check new and sealed games very carefully; I've had ones with extremely well hidden cuts in the cellophane. Hence why I usually take no chances; anything that looks slightly odd and I return it.

That looks resealed to me, but im guessing that is a PAL game, so I am not sure how the packaged those. That may be normal for them?