- The instruction manual for the game states that the Pols Voice, a yellow pointy-eared enemy, "hates loud noise". Although this fact was made irrelevant by the game's release on the North American NES, it was a useful tip in the game's original version for the Famicom Disk System in Japan. On the Famicom, a small microphone was built into the "player 2" controller, and blowing or shouting into this microphone would kill any Pols Voices in the area.
- The Book of Magic was known as Bible in the Japanese version of the game. This was likely changed because it violated Nintendo of America's then-very strict content guidelines which among others disapproved of any religious content or references inside games released for their systems. Interestingly enough, however, all depictions of the cross were kept intact.
- This game was first released in Japan on Nintendo's Famicom Disk System (which used disks as its medium instead of cartridges). Thanks to the Disk System's improved sound technology, the music from both the title screen and ending sequence feature an extra layer of sound, making them sound somewhat "smoother" than the subsequent American cartridge release as well as the game's Japanese re-release on cartridge in the early '90s.
- Re-released in 2003 as part of a Zelda Collector's Disk which also included The Adventure of Link, Ocarina of Time, Majora's Mask, and a demo for The Wind Waker. Although the gameplay and graphics remained the same, a lot of the infamously translated text was cleaned up, namely the story introduction and some character dialog.
- Re-released in 2004 for the Game Boy Advance as part of the "Classic NES" series. The only change made was a graphical one - the GBA screen resolution is somewhat smaller than the NES, so the graphics were "smashed" a bit to fit them onto the screen.
- During the SNES era, Bandai released an add-on for the SNES called "Satellaview-X" in Japan. It allowed gamers to connect to an Internet-like network and download games onto blank cartridges for an hour a day. One of these games was "The Legend of Zelda BS," a 16-bit version of the original featuring a few very noticable changes. Link was replaced with the Satellaview mascot (some kid in a baseball cap), and some maps were dramatically changed, most noticably the overworld. At various time intervals, certain events would happen such as items or power-ups appearing in specific locations. The game was never finished because Nintendo released small portions of it at a time, and the Satellaview-X was scrapped before the entire game would be released to the public. A group of fans "finished" the game themselves by designing the final dungeons and releasing the game as an (illegal) ROM available for download on the Internet.
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