It's not common, but Nintendo occasionally releases compilations of their video games on physical media. That is the case with The Legend of Zelda: Collector's Edition for GameCube, which has become highly sought after in recent years.
It contains four classic action-adventure games in The Legend of Zelda series across two different platforms. The Legend of Zelda and Zelda II: The Adventure of Link are Nintendo Entertainment System games while The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, are Nintendo 64 games.
These games were not ports as they were presented through emulation. The Nintendo Entertainment System emulator was previously used in Animal Crossing while the Nintendo 64 emulator was previously used in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time - Master Quest compilation.
The Nintendo Entertainment System emulation is fantastic, as the games play nearly identically to the original releases. The differences include changes to reduce the amount of flickering to prevent seizures and numerous translation corrections in The Legend of Zelda. These changes were originally made for the Classic NES Series for the Game Boy Advance.
The Nintendo 64 emulation, however, isn't quite up to par. There are slowdowns in both games, which can be forgiven as the Nintendo 64 was only one console generation behind the GameCube. It is honestly quite impressive the emulator runs the games as well as it does. Less forgivable, however, is the fact that Majora's Mask is known to be prone to crashes.
The compilation also contains two videos. One is an advertisement for The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker while the other is named The Legend of Zelda: A Respective. The latter video includes logos and gameplay from all of the games in The Legend of Zelda series that were released up to the point of its release in 2003. As it includes only the games that Nintendo deems part of the series canon, there aren't any outliers included here such as the CD-i games.
The Legend of Zelda: Collector's Edition was a great compilation in its time as it included four The Legend of Zelda games in one package. The Legend of Zelda and Zelda II: The Adventures of Link are emulated remarkably well, and the localization fixes and flicker removal in the first game are a welcome inclusion. However, the Nintendo 64 games, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, are not as well emulated. The crashes in the latter make this compilation more of a collector's item than a way to play the games. All four games have been emulated in re-releases much better in the years following this compilation. The video advertisement for Wind Waker and The Legend of Zelda: A Retrospective are really barebones and aren't enough to make this compilation worth recommending.
Final Verdict:
3 out of 5
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