queengame

Queen – The Game

More of the Music of Queen

  • This copy of Queen’s hit-filled release from 1980 boasts outstanding Double Plus (A++) grades or close to them from start to finish – fairly quiet vinyl too
  • One of our top picks for amazing Queen sound – few of their recordings can touch it for energy and size (particularly on this side one)
  • Plenty of hits here, including “Another One Bites The Dust” and “Crazy Little Thing Called Love,” which both sound excellent here
  • 4 1/2 stars: “… the striking difference with this album is that it finds Queen turning decidedly, decisively pop, and it’s a grand, state-of-the-art circa 1980 pop album that still stands as one of the band’s most enjoyable records.”

On this killer copy you get solid bass, Tubey Magic, breathy vocals and big, bold sound!

Compared to a lot of the copies we played, these sides have more energy, bigger bass and even more present and breathy vocals. This is without a doubt some of the best sound we have ever heard for Queen, no ifs, ands or buts about it.

The quality of bass on this record is often superb. The best copies were Demo Discs in that regard. You have probably never heard Queen sound this good.

Take it from us, the guys who play nothing but vintage vinyl all day: not many Queen records sound as good as The Game.

The Game Rocks

The Game rocks. It’s everything we want in a good Queen record. Credit must, of course, go to their engineer, a fellow who goes by the name of Reinhold Mack. This is his first album for Queen and he really nailed it. Mack also worked with Electric Light Orchestra and those are some wonderful sounding Big Production Rock recordings.

We’re big dynamic speaker guys here at Better Records and we love the “big sound.” (Wish we could find more clean, top quality copies of ELO’s albums. With few exceptions, most of their titles are hard to come by. You don’t see many on our site for precisely the same reasons that you don’t see much Queen on our site.)

The Game is clearly one of the two best sounding records Queen ever made. Do you see a lot of Queen albums going up on the site? The demand is there, but where is the supply?

There’s a good reason for their scarcity as Hot Stampers. As much as people might love to hear some top quality pressing of Queen on vinyl, we just can’t seem to find many that do their brand of multi-layered Big Production Rock justice.

No need for Brit vinyl on The Game, thank goodness. This domestic pressing has the sound of a Master Tape, no doubt about it. The sound is superb throughout, not a claim we can make for many Queen records.

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What to Listen For on Queen’s The Game

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Queen Available Now

Years ago we wrote:

The best sounding side ones were rarely as good as the best sounding side twos.

Not sure if that’s still true but you can check your own copy and see how the two sides compare.

Here some more records that often display side to side differences.

Even the good side ones tended to have a trace of harmonic distortion and compression that is simply nowhere to be found on the good side twos. How and why this is we have no idea. Since every copy had the same sonic issues, we discounted it in our grading. Only the better copies bring the hits on side one to life and give them the size and power we know they can have.

One of the qualities we don’t talk about nearly enough on the site is the SIZE of the record’s presentation. So many copies of this album just sound small, or at least smaller — they don’t extend all the way to the outside edges of the speakers, and they don’t seem to take up all the space from the floor to the ceiling. Other copies do. They create a huge soundfield from which the instruments and voices positively jump out of the speakers. When you hear a copy that can do that, needless to say (to anyone on this site), it’s an entirely different listening experience.

Dirty Little Secrets

The Game is clearly one of the two best sounding records Queen ever made. The Dirty Little Secret of Queen’s recorded output is that most of their albums have mediocre sound, and often they’re downright dreadful.

Do you see a lot of Queen albums going up on the site? The demand is there, but where is the supply?

There’s a good reason for their scarcity as Hot Stampers. As much as people might love to hear some top quality pressing of Queen on vinyl, we just can’t seem to find many that do their brand of multi-layered Big Production Rock justice.

Take A Night at the Opera for example. Isn’t it supposed to be a good sounding record? I’ve played twenty of them over the last ten years — imports, domestics, the DCC, the MoFi – and practically none of them sounded as good as I was expecting. If you think the album is well recorded, don’t just rely on your memory. Pull out your own copy and listen to it closely; you should hear the same distortion and smearing and transistory grain that’s on all the copies I’ve played.

It’s a record that’s trying to sound good but just doesn’t — so far anyway.

Hope springs eternal, and of course we will keep looking, but for now the Queen titles we know to have the potential to sound good are pretty much limited to A Day at the Races, News of the World and The Game.

UPDATE 2015 or so

GOOD NEWS – We now know which pressings sound good, and they sound very good indeed!

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