Things to keep in Mind

Black Label Games

What we consider "Black Label" may not be the true "first release" - For instance, any game that came with a movie ticket (having a callout on the front art for that ticket) may in fact be the first release, as they probably came out right before or while that movie was still in theatres. When that movie left theatres they reprinted the art without that "movie ticket" callout on front and removed the ticket. Therefore the "plain" art without the callout on front is actually the variant to the original "movie ticket" version

To keep things simple, however, we consider any game without a callout on the front as the "black label" version, and any version that has an added callout on the front for something included with the game as the "black label variant".

Greatest Hits

Greatest Hits games can be found in 2 versions, Official released GH games and "Sticker" GH games. At some point when a game was set to be released as a GH title, Sony sent out Greatest Hits stickers to place at the top of backstock of black label titles to help them sell that inventory before they received their shipment of the GH titles. As a result there are certain game that have both official and sticker GH versions. Then there are some games where there only seem to be a few sticker GH versions found, no official release. The thought is that some retailers may have placed those GH stickers on games that were not set to get an official GH release, mainly to be able to mark those games at GH prices and sell them cheaper. On the Greatest Hits page I will list any "Sticker" Greatest Hits Games that have been found, but if they have no official GH release we do not count them towards the total number of GH games released.

Variants

Variants refer to any version of the game besides the normal Black Label release (see above). This includes everything below. In the case of Part of Set/NFR games they are included on the variant list as well as the "Multi-Game Sets list". This is done so you know that you need to watch out for these games that came as a part of a set, as they often get separated from the larger set and resold individually in the secondary market.  

Variant Terms/Naming:

• Art Variant
• Movie Ticket Variant/Cover Callout
• Bonus Item Variant/Cover Callout
• Error Variant
• Magazine Variant
• Rental Store Variant
• Not For Resale/NFR
• Publisher Variant
• Bonus Disk Variant
• Part of a Set/NFR Variant
• Collectors/Special Edition
• UPC Variant
• SLUS Variant
• Canadian Variant
• Disk Art Variant