If you're new to Queen and you're planning on getting the Platinum collection, then I can tell you for sure that you won't be dissapointed... however, it would be a better choice to get the old "Greatest Hits I & II" box set with "Made In Heaven" added.

Why??... because "Greatest Hits I & II" has the best of Queen from 1974-1991, and the only album that Queen put out after Freddie Mercury's death in 1991 was 'Made In Heaven'

Greatest Hits 3 has the hit tracks from Made In Heaven, plus some good hits that weren't before included (These Are The Days, No One But You, Princes Of The Universe, Thank God It's X-mas).

The bad thing is that Greatest Hits 3 has a bunch of refills that should have never been included... "Under Pressure (Mix)", "The Show Must Go On" (w/ Elton John) and a horrible version of "Another One Bites The Dust" by Wyclef Jean that ruins this album just as much as Jar Jar Binks ruined Star Wars: Episode I.

What is even more annoying about Greatest Hits 3 is the fact that they left out REAL QUEEN HITS, like... Tie Your Mother Down, Scandal, and Love Of My Life and they had to include a bunch of tracks that aren't even QUEEN songs.

You wouldn't regret buying 'The Platinum Collection' but I can almost guarantee that when you listen the 3rd CD, you'd want to skip tracks 1,2, and especially 14!!.

Queen was pure glam rock. Freddie Mercury was 1 in a million, his voice was the best in rock (Robert Plant's is second). He was incredibly flamboyant, and operatic and Queen definitely gave the greatest live shows of our time. They sounded like no other band with four hit songwriters who wrote many songs that would later become sports anthems or movie themes such as the amazing Flash, Who Wants To Live Forever, One Vision, We Will Rock You, We Are The Champions and Another One Bites The Dust. The 1st Disc is 70's glam rock Queen and the second disc is 80's pop rock Queen. I prefer this collection over the 2 previous Hollywood releases of 'Classic Queen' and 'Greatest Hits' because this version has one of my favorite Queen songs, "Innuendo," and the song "Flash" that was on the original greatest hits album from 1981. The song order is also better. The only flaw on the second disc is the recording of "Under Pressure." This version sounds different than the one on `Classic Queen.' The base is much softer and the vocals don't flow as well.

A reminder: Disc Three is not a greatest hits cd. It's a cd of mostly solo works, songs from the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert, and songs from the album `Made In Heaven,' an album that came out after Freddie died. The third disc does not do the band any justice and should be re-released with actual hits or songs from Queen during their prime years. Hopefully, Queen's Brian May will someday release a true best-of collection with classic songs that did not make the hit chart but were true masterpieces. I'm talking about the songs: Spread Your Wings, You Take My Breath Away, Love of My Life, Melancholy Blues, Teo Torriatte, Death On Two Legs, The Prophet Song, 39', and Seaside Rendezvous. Songs on 'Queen II' like Procession, White Queen, The Fairy Feller's Master-Stroke, Nevermore and March Of The Black Queen should also not be ignored.

I love Queen. In my opinion, they are the greatest rock and roll band ever (I know I'm going to catch a lot of heat for that statement, but I stand my opinion). As with all great bands, Quen has a barrage of geatest hits collections available for caual fans and diehards alike. Some time ago, the three cd mini boxed set "Queen - The Platinum Collection" came out. How does it hold up? Read on.

Positives:

-If you're a casual fan, this boxed set will suit you well.Disc one has all the classic Queen hits, including "Bohemian Rhapsody", "You're My Best Friend", "Somebody To Love" and "Another One Bites The Dust".

-There are a lot of underrated masterpieces included, especially on disc two, such as "I Want It All", "The Miracle", "The Show Must Go On" and "The Invisible Man".

-The songs sound great.

The liner notes for this collection are fantastic.

Negatives:

-Disc three is unneeded. It contains ome truly great songs that deserve to be here (for exampl,e the tearjerking "These Are The Days Of Our Lives", one of my all time favorite Queen songs ever. But the majority of the songs are just rare filler.

-"One Visoin" is, in my opinion, filler that should not be on here.

-Discs 1 & 2 are a mere repackaging of "Greatest Hits Vols. 1 & 2". If they wanted to make a third disc, here's what the song selection should have been:

*Tie Your Mother Down

*Stone Cold Crazy

*Keep Yourself Alive

*Love Of My Life (why was this never on a Queen collection)?

*All God's People

*One Year Of Love

*Death On Two Legs

*Las Palabras De Amor

*Calling All Girls

*Body Language

*The Great Pretender

*It's Late

*Was It All Worth It

*Scandal

*Is This The World We Created

*Thank God It's Christmas

*These Are The Days Of Our Lives

So, while I guess this is a decent boxed set, I think you're better off buying either "Greatest Hits Vols. 1 & 2" or buying the single disc collections "Classic Queen" and "Greatest Hits" together.

The Platinum Collection is a repackaging of their 90's compilations Greatest Hits 1 & 2 that were issued by Hollywood Records with the addition of a third disc of additional Queen tracks, some solo Freddie Mercury tracks and a few good/bad cover versions of tracks from a few different artists like Elton John, George Michael and Wyclef from the Fugees.

The cool thing though about this re-release of this new collection is that these are actually newly remastered (circa 2001) versions of the tracks and they are even punchier and clearer than the 1991 masters used in the previous "gold" cover of hits 1 & 2.

For one thing, you don't have to crank them quite as loud as you did the other collection and like I have already mentioned, the songs are crystal clear.

Basically, Disc 1 covers the years from 1974 to 1980 (nothing was included from their debut 1973 album however) while Disc 2 covers 1982 to 1991. Disc 3 compiles some singles from their 1995 release of posthumous Freddie Mercury material entitled Made in Heaven that the surviving 3 members completed along with some additional tracks their 80's/90's albums as well.

My main complaint is that Disc 1 is only 58 minutes long and it contains the radio edit of Fat Bottomed Girls. With the reamining space, they could have/should have included other classic Queen tracks like Tie Your Mother Down and some other amazing album cuts that while not released as singles are fan favorites.

Disc 2 comes close to being 77 minutes in length. My only other beef is that they included the single edit of One Vision on Disc Two instead of the album version. I don't know what made them do that when they had plenty of room to put the album cut.

Disc 3 should have been all Queen and Freddie Mercury solo stuff and not included any of the cover versions of tracks as some are great and some are awful, but calling disc 3 Queen Greatest Hits III is kind of deceptive advertising when it's not all stuff actually by Queen on it.

One thing I found is that you can actually fit some of the remaining choice queen cuts off of Disc 3 onto the end of Disc 1 via burning on a computer/CD burner which is what I did for my traveling copies I keep in my car.

For someone just starting to get into Queen, even with the sometimes problematic Disc 3, this is a great buy for people wanting to get something that covers their entire career. People just wanting the hits will get all they want as well with buying this.

Then, people wanting to go deeper can then go and track down the studio albums to dig deeper if they like what they hear. In that case, people should try to track down the 2001 Japanese remasters which sound better than the 1991 Hollywood Records reissues/remasters.

Queen is one of those rare bands that will never be matched, it's been said before, but Freddie's voice really was the best. And Finally the Platinum collection is available in the USA, If your new to Queen I recommmend this set, If your an old time fan to, because you've probably only heard 1/3 of the set, that being the 70's hits. It's almost the exact same thing as Greatest Hits I-II (with the exception of GH III), but the disks have their original covers, not the gold ones, and The booklet is a alot better. How could you pass this up? It's the same price as the other one. You've got their beginning work such as the ever-so-popular BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY, Deacon's ANOTHER ONE BITES THE DUST, The 2 "double sided" singles FAT BOTTOMED GIRLS/BICYCLE RACE and WE WILL ROCK YOU/WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS and all the stuff in between. Then the later work such as the Bass/synth driven BREAKTHRU, classic 80's soft rock like A KIND OF MAGIC and UNDER PRESSURE, not to mention some of their heaviest, I WANT IT ALL, HEADLONG, ONE VISION, and HAMMER TO FALL. But the Real bonus is the 3rd CD, capturing solo work, remixes, stuff from MADE IN HEAVEN, and songs that got lost in the shuffle. Don't waste your time with stuff that's being played today because it's popular, get the GOOD stuff!!!