I found Mortal Kombat: Deception to be a perfect example of what a Special Edition should be. Personally I owned the PS2 version which came as two discs in two separate cases. The second case, as well as the box-set itself had an alternate cover art that featured Sub-Zero. The Sub-Zero image was used on a metallic trading card as well. The bonus disc contained a video about the history of the Mortal Kombat series up to that point and also included short video biographies about each of the playable characters. Finally there was an arcade-perfect port of the original Mortal Kombat. If memory serves me correctly, all of this combined cost $10.00 more than the standard edition. I’m a huge fan of Mortal Kombat and looking back I really feel like this is the perfect stencil of a Special Edition. For a reasonable amount more than the price of the basic release, you get a ton of great stuff. Just the original Mortal Kombat game alone probably costs close to $10.00 to download off of the PlayStation Store or Xbox Live Marketplace. Throw in all the videos and the biographies and the trading card and you get all this great content. Naturally only a diehard fan is going to shell out the extra coin to pickup anything beyond the standard release and as such I think this is the perfect example of how developers and publishers should reward their fans and really give them content worth the extra money they shelled out.

With that being my definition of a Special Edition, we now move on to the “Collector’s Edition”. Now honestly there probably isn’t a huge difference between these two as one would expect a Collector’s Edition to contain many of the same features as a Special Edition. The way I see it though, a Collector’s Edition should have several physical pieces of content not included in a standard edition. The most popular things that jump to my mind are art books, soundtracks and so forth. These particular items are what it means to be a collector because they go beyond the “norm” of a Special Edition bonus disc by featuring extras outside of the game itself. Usually I would expect these packages to be priced around $20.00 - $30.00 more than the standard edition totaling about $80.00. I find it hard to designate any release to this point that fits my personal description of a Collector’s Edition though. Usually there isn’t enough stuff for a game to be considered a Collector’s Edition or there’s a lot more and a higher price tag. In the case of the latter, I classify that as a “Limited Edition”.

A Limited Edition is exactly that, limited. These particular releases are going to be produced in much smaller numbers and from what I’ve seen are priced somewhere in the triple digits. Honestly I find the price of a Limited Edition to be almost unreasonably steep, but if you’re that dedicated of a fan, it’s justified because you’re getting plenty of stuff for your money and being that it’s “limited” they won’t necessarily be rare, but they will be fewer and further between. Based on just this year alone, the Limited Edition release has really grown to surprising numbers. Off the top of my head there’s Batman: Arkham Asylum, Modern Warfare 2, Assassin’s Creed II as well as the first Assassin’s Creed, Resistance 2, Halo 3, Grand Theft Auto IV and so forth.

What makes these collections so unique is that they have everything to this point from bonus discs, extra content, art books, soundtracks. Generally some combination of all that good stuff. However what separates the Limited Edition from everything else is the extra little goodie that’s packed inside. With Halo 3 it was a mini Master Chief helmet. Batman is going to have a 14-inch batarang while Modern Warfare 2 is supposed to feature working night-vision goggles. Even Assassin’s Creed and Resistance 2 included figurines of characters in their respective games. Whatever the developers and publishers decide to go with, the whole point is the extra item included is a rarity and to call the entire collection anything but a Limited Edition doesn’t make sense.

That’s my classification of the various special editions based on what I think is the closest definition to each term. Personally I don’t mind these different skews and releases when they’re done right. Not too long ago, Sony did the best thing I’ve seen by surveying members of the PlayStation Network and asking them what they’d like to see in a potential Collector’s Edition of God of War III. I was extremely happy to see this email because I now got to actually voice my opinion. More often than not, if you’re a fan of a series and you have the money, picking up the Special Edition of a game is going to be worth your money. But rather than have publishers guess what fans want to see packaged, I think they should just ask. The gaming community is vocal and we’ll tell you what we want. All you have to do is ask.

As I conclude my thoughts, the one thing that concerns me is that more and more these special editions are beginning to look the same. As I mentioned three of this year’s biggest games, Batman: Arkham Asylum, Modern Warfare 2, and Assassin’s Creed II are going to have Limited Edition releases along side the standard game. But if you look at what’s included in their alternate skews, a lot of the content in similar. Switch out an art book here for a soundtrack there or a challenge map from one collection and a downloadable game from another and you basically have the exact same collections. If you’re a Batman fan or a Call of Duty fan or an Assassin’s Creed fan, these are a little expensive but probably worth the money. Especially when you throw in the batarang or the night-vision goggles. But they’re so similar to one another. I love flipping through art books and listening to a game’s soundtrack, but I think there needs to be a little more diversity and a little more originality. If not we’re going to lose the whole mystique of having all this extra content.