Famicom Disk System Zelda prints?

[AdamW | 713]

Hey folks! Yeah, just me being nerdy about prints again.

I noticed something interesting about the original Legend of Zelda (then subtitled "The Hyrule Fantasy") for the Famicom Disk System today: there seem to be two prints of it. On one, the "FAMICOM DISK SYSTEM" logo at front top left of the cover/manual is yellow; on the the other, it's white. There also appear to be two variants of the disk label, one with the katakana system logo ("ファミリーコンピュータ ディスクシステム") in yellow, one with it in white (confusing things a bit, there seems to have been a sheet of stickers included with the game, including replacement disk labels; the replacement labels on the sticker sheet seem to have the logo in yellow even on copies of the game where the original disk label has it in white).

"Yellow" print:

"White" print:

I've been trying to figure out an ordering for these two prints based on the disk serial numbers, using @0xDEAFC0DE's theory from

However, it's a bit unclear so far. I went through 15 pages of sold listings on YAJ, but the codes are frequently not visible or only partially visible in the pictures. These are the lists I wound up with:

* white logo: L265K?? J026104(?) J??6?? K016J16(?)
* yellow logo: K75J11 H236G07 K??6?? L016K10 A147L15

a ? in the code means I couldn't read that character, a (?) at the end means the code was pretty fuzzy and I'm not 100% sure of it. We have two codes from 1985, it looks like, one per print. There's substantial overlap in the middle of 1986 - white logo copies apparently from October, November and December 1986, and yellow logo copies apparently from August, November and December. And there's a yellow logo copy with a disk from January 1987, though that copy wasn't very 'complete' which makes me suspicious it may be a Frankenstein. More data would help establish which are likely outliers, but that's all the data I got.

So, does anyone have any knowledge/ideas on this? Thanks!

Edited October 7, 2021 by AdamW
order the codes

[AdamW | 713]

hmm, Metroid and Zelda 2 - which obviously came out a little later - seem to only have 'white logo' prints. Which kinda implies the 'yellow logo' print may be the earlier one, I guess.

[0xDEAFC0DE | 1,277]

The yellow logo manual print is definitely the earlier one. Note that the white ones have a barcode on that back such as in this listing (https://page.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/h1008596510) whereas the yellow ones are barcode free. At some point I think I did date code analysis as well and I though most of the white ones were later (at least for the items that looked complete).

As far as the white disk logos, for some reason I have it in my head that those are rewritten disks only. But my memory might be failing here, or I could just be wrong.

[0xDEAFC0DE | 1,277]

Hmm, this disk has the white text alongside the white manual. But, the replacement stickers in the manual have yellow text. https://page.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/c1008293111

But, it could just be that all of the manual replacement stickers are yellow.

EDIT: I just noticed that the outer box's barcode doesn't match ("KDS-BOK"), so this is likely a Frankenstein anyway.

Edited October 7, 2021 by 0xDEAFC0DE

[0xDEAFC0DE | 1,277]

Ah wait a minute. I think I remember how I determined that the white text disks were rewrite only. I went through all the sealed Zelda's and didn't find any with the white text including those with the white manual variant. Another quick look and I found five with the white manual and yellow disk text.

[AdamW | 713]

hah, I hadn't noticed that about the barcode on the back of the manual. Thanks!