timdiggerm said:

Why doesn't Harmy's A New Hope have the episode number??

I have not seen it but that was how the original film was released so I guess that was the idea to keep it as close to it's original release as possible.

Star wars with its 1981 re-release it had the subtitle Episode IV: A New Hope added to remain consistent with its sequel, and to establish it as the middle chapter of a continuing saga before Empire strikes Back with the episode number and also called "A New Hope" otherwise originally It was just called...

STAR WARS

none of the OT films were advertised with any mention of episode numbers only by it's episode name title. And referred to as the next chapter.

And STAR WARS has always been known as STAR WARS rather than a new hope. It always felt a bit tacked on.

ESB has always had an episode number though as has ROTJ although they only needed them really because of the other 2 trilogies

The episodic model really kicked in for the PT and more of a big deal was made about it being the missing episodes at this point.

I thought I would add this from the ebook that has been released for interest:

"One really cool video shows the original version of the title card. Originally the STAR WARS logo (in a different design) didn't recede straight backward. Instead it started out in normal orientation, then folded over backwards into the plane of the opening crawl, and then receded, followed immediately by the crawl text."

Now I would love to see that too.