Nitendo Game Catalog Codes

[JVOSS | 1,762]

Good Day,

Looking for a Month and Year when Nintendo went to the 4 digit code format for game identification.

example

2 digit code
DMG-C6-USA

4 digit code
DMG-AMKE-USA

thanks

[Daniel_Doyce | 470]

I think this is better suited to the Collector's Questions forum?

[ThePhleo | 2,184]

I think it was January 1995.

Warios Woods appears to be the last game for SNES to get a 2 digit code, which coincides with NES (Though in PAL regions I think Aladdin or Lion King was the last NES game some one in 1995)

Ill see what I can dig up

[JVOSS | 1,762]

5 minutes ago, ThePhleo said:

I think it was January 1995.

Warios Woods appears to be the last game for SNES to get a 2 digit code, which coincides with NES (Though in PAL regions I think Aladdin or Lion King was the last NES game some one in 1995)

Ill see what I can dig up

i tried to google this but was just getting information on Switch.

in the gameboy carts i have a theory about newly identified variants and wanted to test this but did not know when the changeover happened. i was thinking they changed all the code at the sometime for all systems..

[ThePhleo | 2,184]

8 hours ago, JVOSS said:

i tried to google this but was just getting information on Switch.

in the gameboy carts i have a theory about newly identified variants and wanted to test this but did not know when the changeover happened. i was thinking they changed all the code at the sometime for all systems..

I think you’re onto something.

Its reasons like this that it’s time to ignore single system collector quirks and look at the overall picture of the entire industry.

 

[RH | 4,881]

January of any year would make since. It's the new year and companies like to make policy and procedure changes at the new year because it's human nature to look for fresh starts. People just get off the holiday season, so they get back to work with updated processes.

Who knows how hard it was to switch from 2-4 characters. It could have been moderately difficult if it was frequently used in database fields of fixed widths expecting 2 characters. This seems like a task an IT team would be directed to fix through early December, role out over the holidays and then all future, new codes and releases would have four characters.

 

[ThePhleo | 2,184]

Rumor dispelled.

Arkanoid: Doh It Again! was released at the end of the SNES lifespan and it has a 2 digit product code. SNS-A6-USA

There's definitely a "trend" that appears in mid-1994 that they phased out two digit codes in favor of four, but it's not a hard line unfortunately.

Earliest 4-digit I found so far is Ballz 3-D which is an early Spring 1994 title. SNS-ABZE-USA

 

I only quickly checked SNES A through K so far....but it's already abundantly clear that there's no hard line.

Edited November 15, 2020 by ThePhleo