I went by Walmart today to see what was up with the Super Street Fighter 4 thing.   I talked to the guy that normally checks out my games.  He candidly told me that they do have the game, locked up in the game cage in the back, but there is no way they could sell it to me.  He was putting movies away and had a box of DVD's marked for the 27th on the counter.  He pulled a random movie out of the box and ran it up at the register as if he was going to sell it.  The register beeped three times and displayed "SALE NOT ALLOWED" on the screen that normally shows the price.  So to get someone at a Walmart to sell you something early they would have to put it in the system manually as some other not restricted bar code.  Which would eventually show up on that stores inventory as theft.  So I don't see how they under the current system would be able to sell one early without getting in trouble with the company.  He did say that whoever flags street dated games or movies as "SALE NOT ALLOWED" sometimes forgets and or misses a game.  The example he gave was that all their copies of Mass Effect 2 were not sellable until it's release date but the Collector's Edition copies were a separate bar code and could go through.