After some more research I am pretty sure now that the Colecovision console with the German front plate came in a German box. The same goes probably for the console with the French front plate.

Same for the games: The carts with German label came most probably in a German box, not in a multilingual. And they had probably German manuals only.

I am still unsure if the single-language consoles and games were released before the multilingual ones (which I presume) or if both versions were sold at the same time, the multilingual being sold in countries that didn't have a single-language version. But as the second option would not make much sense, I think that there were first the single-language versions, and later they switched to the multilingual version to save on costs.

Still any input welcome here " />

Ok, so lets add some photos here. We're talking about PAL variations.

I think the first variation here was the first that was released in Europe, with the European launch of the system. Here for example the German version. Those single-language boxes also exist in French and English. If you know of other languages, please let me know. The multi-language versions (see second picture) contain five languages (English, French, German, Spanish and Italian), so the single-language versions probably do also exist in those five languages.

To my knowledge, some months after the launch of the system in Europe, CBS changed the boxes from single-language to multi-language, probably for cost reasons. This is the box for the same game, but the second release, with box text and manual in five languages. I think that all the games that exist in this five-language version, do also exist in single-language versions, which were prior to them.

Later European releases were ONLY released in multi-language format. Box text and manual in four languages (English, French, German and Italian – Spanish was dropped), with black background for title at the top and the info at the bottom of the box cover. I think that there are NO single-language versions of those games.

I also found a Subroc with only three languages (English, French, German).

This is to my best knowledge. If you have other or more info, please let us know.

I have also a Roc'n Rope that was sold in Belgium (price sticker on box), but it is the US version. So either this is a grey import or it is a very late release and they just took the US version for Europe too, to save even more on costs. Any help appreciated here.

Well, I am 99 % sure that the grey-multis were earlier than the black-multis. All the early games like Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr, Zaxxon, etc. exist only in grey-multi (and in single-language of course).

And I haven't found any single-language games from the black-multis so far. This is an indicator that those were late releases and CBS didn't care for single-language releases anymore.

Hmm, I got a WarGames today that puzzles me a bit. Box and cartridge have 4 languages on them (English, French, German, Italian), but the manual has 5 languages (adding Dutch). I don't know if it was sold that way or if the seller added a 5 language manual to the 4 language box + cart.

Funny anyway, because so far I didn't know of any games that were released in 4 language version as well as 5 language version.

So there is another mystery …

Many thanks for the info Norman. I'll check my four language versions too.

Still it's funny why they did it this way (Dutch only in the manual, but not on the box or cart). Maybe it has something to do that they were "printed in Holland"?