Cartridge variations, do you care or must you collect?

[noclass_nick]

I was going through all my sega master system loose carts and looking for better quality ones to swap into my collection when I noticed the cart variations, eg aliens 3 red text vs aliens 3 blue text, games with red labels with white grid vs red labels with black grids.

My question is how much does cart variations matter to you? I never thought about it but I cant trade them away they have to go into the collection now. Pushed me up about 20 games into my sms collection now at 173 games :S

What other consoles also have cartridge variations?

Does multi region titles, eg ntsc, pal, jap, factor into your collections?

Dicuss!

[wiggy]

Every console has this.  For the SNES there are "made in Japan" and "made in Mexico" variants, player's choice versus original releases, etc.  I've never really cared about that, but I do actually collect some hardware variants. There are quite a few revisions of the original SNES motherboard and the Saturn went through many as well. For some reason I'm compelled to collect them.

[amarthar]

For PAL SNES you've got 3 label styles and there are also regional variations (like "The Lion King" being named "Le Roi Leon" in France and "Der König der Löwen" in Germany even though the game itself isn't changed in any way), or just a different part number (like UKV in England, NOE in Germany, FAH in France and EUR for others).

I also kinda don't care.

[quickfingers818]

I am with wiggy on this one. I don't really care for game variants, so long that it is NTSC. They play pretty much exactly the same anyways. And I will almost always opt for the original "non players choice" if there is that option. I do, however collect hardware variants. I have all models of the sega saturn variants as well as the ps1 and ps2 variants. I have a mega drive, but I also have a genesis. Same for super famicom and snes. However I do like to collect the same game for different systems if the game play is different, such as shadowrun on the snes and genesis. Both games are completely different, yet the box art and game label suggest otherwise.

[e_brugal]

i much don't care but in playstation and xbox i prefer not to collect "gratest hits" or "Platinum Edition"

[FritzWhite]

I guess I say to myself that it doesn't really matter, but truth is, I hate when a game stands out from the others too much on the shelf. I almost always prefer a uniform look. Other than that, it's not a huge deal, but I'll admit I always go for the regular black label if it's available.

similar topic:
http://www.thecoverproject.net/forums/index.php?topic=12910.0

[quickfingers818]

i much don't care but in playstation and xbox i prefer not to collect "gratest hits" or "Platinum Edition"

is there anything more annoying than looking at your ps2 collection and seeing a ugly greatest hits spine with the rest of your black-spined collection?

[shenske]

It depends on the situation.

For my NES collection I have been trying to collect both the black Tengen carts and their official gray cart releases when available. They are different enough that i want both versions. Besides that I don't really care for variants.  

Hell, off of the top of my head there are 4 variations of Pac-Man on the NES alone

[wiggy]

i much don't care but in playstation and xbox i prefer not to collect "gratest hits" or "Platinum Edition"

is there anything more annoying than looking at your ps2 collection and seeing a ugly greatest hits spine with the rest of your black-spined collection?

I have like 3 GameCube player's choice games. I printed new covers for all of them

[Oobgarm]

I generally dislike title variations unless they have something exclusive or extra that wasn't in the original release. (Like the original Mass Effect [360], Midnight Club 3: DUB Edition [PS2], or Virtua Fighter 4: Evolution [PS2].)

Console variations are okay, but I generally don't seek them out unless I really like the machine to begin with.

[redsox2012]

I pick up cartridge variations whenever I see them, provided they're reasonably priced.  My favorites are for Colecovison.  A few early releases were later re-branded "for Colecovision & Adam" when the Adam computer came out.   One of these (Venture) is supposedly very rare, earning a rarity of 9/10 on a list by a respected Coleco authority.  I found one in a lot about a year ago - the seller obviously didn't know it was a rare variation.  It was an auction, and I won it for $45.  The rest of the lot was super common stuff.  Someone sold one on Ebay recently, but it's also unlikely he knew it was the rare variation as it was a $9.99 buy it now, and the variation wasn't mentioned in the listing.  That one along with mine are the only ones I've ever seen for public sale.  Needless to say, it's hard to put a value on it with no specific sales history, although when I shared my buy on AtariAge some collectors said that they would have paid over $100 for mine.

[Lumberjack42]

Thankfully, the 5200 only had two cart variations, Zone Ranger and Miner 2049er

[kingjohn3]

I have a gold NES Zelda with the end logo white instead of red. I checked really close to see if it was simply faded but the gold is the right color and the word ZELDA it almost pure white, no signs of fading. I also collect 5 screw carts. If a 5 screw is available I tend to think of it like a 1st print comic. I would rather have the original than a re-release. Apparently Alpha Mission is really hard to find.....

[quickfingers818]

i much don't care but in playstation and xbox i prefer not to collect "gratest hits" or "Platinum Edition"

is there anything more annoying than looking at your ps2 collection and seeing a ugly greatest hits spine with the rest of your black-spined collection?

I have like 3 GameCube player's choice games. I printed new covers for all of them

Superb idea. Good thing I only have a few greatest hits games but I will definitely do that this weekend 

[Thom Grayson]

I've seen some of the N64 games with multiple cartridge colors... I like getting, say, the blue one instead of the gray copy of HydroThunder, but not nearly enough to get duplicates.