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I've recently become interested in collecting old NES games. I'm trying to find an original NES Legend of Zelda game CIB. However, I'm having trouble distinguishing different versions of the game. All of the LOZ games have a box, owner's manual, cartridge, sleeve, styrofoam, and a map with secrets. However, when I search on eBay for Legend of Zelda games (CIB), I get several variations. Namely, different games vary on extras in the box (i.e. a Nintendo Power poster, an invitation to subscribe to Nintendo, an invitation to join the Nintendo fun club, etc.) According to Wikipedia, the original NES version had the invitation to join the Nintendo fun club, but I really have no idea if that's correct.

My question is: Is there some online database out there that details what the package contents of different Nintendo video game releases are which is used by serious collectors?

I've tried extensive Googling but to no avail. I found one that looked promising - www.retrocollect.com. It listed several versions for NES' Legend of Zelda. Unfortunately, it really didn't contain any details at all of versions like the original North American release.

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    I'm not aware of any such database. That being said, LOZ was a very popular game over the lifetime of the platform and promotions came and went, thus production runs had different inserts. I'd be surprised if anyone ever really kept tabs on it. That being said, what exactly are you looking for in the CIB ... original run? I don't think I've ever read that there were bug fixes, but given the nature of the pack-ins would have only been promotional, color me a bit skeptical of any value applied to the different revisions. If anything, I'd be more worried about the health of the save game battery!
    – bjb
    Dec 5, 2017 at 17:49
  • I think that's a reasonable comment. But, the same logic could be applied to book collectors. What's the difference between a first and second edition? Probably nothing, except the title page, in many cases. Same kind of reasoning in my opinion. Additionally, I don't even really want to play. I use emulated ROMs for that. My intention is really to just use it as a decorative piece - much like most collectibles. Ideally, yes, I would like to find the original North American release with all original items in the box.
    – entpnerd
    Dec 5, 2017 at 22:09
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    @entpnerd I was hoping for exactly this as I started trying to catalog my collection. Let us know (with an answer) if you ever find such a document/database. I'm afraid we could only create such a repository by finding factory-sealed boxes and opening them...and I'm not prepared to do that or to ask anyone else to, either.
    – Quasi_Stomach
    Dec 7, 2017 at 15:00

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Moby Games allows users to submit box art and cartridges, and often different scans are submitted so we can observe the differences.

BootGod's database focuses mainly on NES/Famicom cartridge hardwre, but also include scans of the cartridges themselves and boxes.

None of those are exhaustive, but at least you can have a fair idea of different boxing for games that were released in multiple runs, such as Legend of Zelda.

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Yes, there is a list being developed that has this information. Here is a link to the list. https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/nes/916386-nes/faqs/49943

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  • I look forward to seeing future versions of this list so that it answers the original example in the question. I don't see any entries yet for the Legend of Zelda, apart from the NES Four Score release.
    – entpnerd
    Mar 3, 2021 at 2:57

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