Gold Cartridge NES Games

[Pie32]

If you guys can remember back to the late 80s, early 90s, you might remember that the two Legend of Zelda games on the NES had gold cartridges. All other licensed Nintendo games (as far as I know) had a grey cartridge.

I hadn't really thought about it much until just now when I read that unlicensed NES games usually had different colored cartridges (then I saw this picture of a really sleak looking powder blue cartridge) than grey, so as to differentiate them from real games. So... I'm wondering if anyone knows why the two Zelda games had non-grey cartridges... they were officially licensed after all...
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[LP-SolidRaven]

Maybe they weren't licensed until after release date.
Or they just wanted a cartridge that looked different.
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[drath]

The thing about unliscened nintendo games is that not only did they (usually) differ in color but also structure. They sometimes sported a different shaping and molding to differentiate them even more. The reason for this was because Nintendo trademarked the design of their catridges, unfortunately they didn't work out the legality of liscencing so third-party games flourished in the grey/black market. Supposedly the loop-hole was big enough for unliscenced Nintendo games to eventually make it to actual stores (I bought one myself in 1990).

Tengen cartridges were black and different looking:
http://www.vidgame.net/NINTEND.....tengen.jpg

The Legend of Zelda is the only liscened Nintendo game that I can think of for the NES that had a gold cartridge. This was because they wanted it to be special, because it was such a huge title for them.

Even though it's the only NES game I can think of the trend only accelerated in SNES and N64. For Super Nintendo there was tons of different colored catridges. Doom was red, Killer Instinct was Black to name a few. Surprisingly The Legend of Zelda for the SNES wasn't colored, although the Nitendo 64 ones were both gold once again (although slightly less shiny then the NES one).
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[Xtreme $niper]

I never owned an NES or an SNES so I don't actually know much about these kinds of details, but I do remember the Legend of Zelda being in a gold cartridge.

I thought it was just for looking good and standing out from the pack because it was such a "legend"-ary game for them (I suppose they predicted correctly).

I do appreciate it when companies take little steps to make things as small as this something that eagle eyed gamers take note of.
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