Queen – Greatest Hits

This grouping gathers the widely divergent array of variations and formats of Queen's phenomenally-successful first "Greatest Hits" album, originally released in the UK on 26 October 1981. It is available on LP, cassette, 8-track, Reel-to-Reel, and of course, it was later re-issued on CD (1984 onwards) and MiniDisc (1998), some in typical remastered fashion (eg. the 2011 remaster).

'Greatest Hits' was an instant success, peaking at number one on the UK Album Chart for four weeks. It has spent over 700 weeks in the UK Charts, and is the best-selling album of all time in the UK, selling over 6 million copies there. It is certified 8 x Platinum in the United States, and is Queen's most commercially successful album worldwide with over 25 million copies sold, making it one of the best-selling albums of all time.

Taking a strict "all killer, no filler" approach to song selection from the 1973 to 1980 period, the original UK version included 17 hits -- as do many other international editions (although some of these feature a bewilderingly different gallery of sleeve art). Later editions, however, begun to include the 1981 hit "Under Pressure" as an 18th track while some international flavours also modified the song selection and sequence in favour of hits particular to those territories.

Simultaneous to the album release were the "Greatest Flix" video assemblage (grouped separately) as well as the "Greatest Pix" book.

Needless to say, there are countless re-issues and bootleg/pirate/copycat versions of each.
Some could be grouped here but BEWARE of totally unrelated items bearing no more than a similar title -- the North American versions from 1992, for instance, share nothing but the title, cover a different career period and belong in their own grouping.