I was looking at my kid icarus today and noticed that the font on the front was red and not pink.  The "adventure series" logo is pink but the title is red, exactly the same red as the nintendo logo just below it.  This is a 5 screw Kid Icarus that came in a non REV-A box.  The cart is in excelent condition, and it is definitely not any kind of fading.  Maybe they ment for it to be pink but the first run was red by mistake?

this is odd I have a early kid Icarus and the font is pink.

actually looks better in red

Haha I thought the same thing!

Mine is the same as your pic.

I have 5 screw versions of both. Looks like the red was first, it is on the one without "Made in Japan" added to the label.

Mine has the red also. I always just assumed the pink lettering was just the result of flashes on cameras and/or bright lighting. Come to think of it, that was pretty stupid.

Another miniscule facet of level of details for variant collectors. Neat.

Surprised I never noticed all these years.

I've never noticed this. Neat!

I noticed this when I got an extra cart in a lot. Sadly I've found it very difficult to get rid of dupes when they are variants, so out of the trade box and into the drawer it went...

About 5 years ago I had a Legend of Zelda gold cart for NES that had pink letters instead of red. I thought the ink might have been faded, but there was no discoloration anywhere else, anyone else notice this on their Zelda carts? I sold mine a while back.

So the non rev A ones came with a 5 screw cart?

Ideally, all pre REV-A boxes would have a matching 5 screw cart inside, but history has shown that this is not the case since during the switch they apparently ran out of 5 screw cartridge shells but still had extra boxes left over which were stuffed with 3 screw carts instead.  A good example of this is the very late 1987 releases (such as Gotcha! and Karate Kid by LJN) which are fairly common to see in pre REV-A boxes but rarely seen in 5 screw form.

With regard to Kid Icarus specifically, non REV-A boxes should contain a 5 screw cart, with the early hangtab boxes containing the original red font variant.
 

Interesting. Pulled out my KI just to see... Red Logo and 5 screw.

I have no idea what this means.

It means it's the earliest type of KI cartridge and almost definitely came in a hangtab box originally.  But from what I've seen over the years, the original 5 screw with the red logo is far more common than the later 5 screw with the proper pink logo.