It’s been a very long time since I’ve done an unboxing. Honestly, I forgot unboxings was a thing I did on the blog and my collecting hasn’t been that hardcore the past couple of years so this type of post fell off to the wayside. I would like to change that now. I imagine I’ll focus on newly released stuff though there are a bunch of stuff that I haven’t opened yet because I’m stupid so I may do retroactive unboxings of those items. We’ll see. For now, let’s get the ball rolling again with the Collector’s Edition of my most anticipated game of 2023, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.
As always with the fancy editions of Nintendo’s first-party titles, pre-ordering this was tough. I narrowly placed an online pre-order via GameStop during my work break. Nothing will ever top pre-ordering the Special Edition of Xenoblade Chronicles 3 for inducing anxiety but getting this edition still made me nervous. As an aside, I want to thank my best friend for spending an all-nighter checking for pre-orders of this Collector’s Edition. It didn’t pan out but I appreciate that he was willing to do that for me.
Anyway, this edition includes the game, a Steelbook case, an art book, a set of pins, and an Iconart steel poster. Let’s take a look, shall we?
Box
You’ll have to pardon the camera glare in a lot of these pictures. Lighting was a bit of an issue for me and some of these components do have a bit of a gloss to them.
My copy has some scuffs here and there. It is what is is. Trying to find a copy in better condition would be impractical anyway.
Above is a cardboard tray which has a smaller tray that contains the game, the Steelbook, and the pins. The art book is packaged underneath the smaller tray. Not going to lie, the items in the smaller tray are fitted in pretty snug so getting them out was a bit tricky.
Game
The Collector’s Edition comes with both the standard case and the Steelbook. You’d be surprising how often that is not the case with these fancy editions. Some of Nintendo’s own releases only included the steelbook. I’ll probably display the steelbook on my shelf and keep the standard case in the box but it is nice that the Collector’s Edition gives you the option to pick whichever case you want to display. For the record, the cartridge is in standard case so I did have to unseal it in order to assess the game itself.
Pins
The outer artwork shown above is actually a slipcover for the box containing the pins.
Art Book
Hooray for hardcover.
This is a beefy art book. There are sketches for all sorts of assets presumably found in the game. Oddly enough, the text is mostly in Japanese. Call me a racist but it is a bit lazy that Nintendo didn’t provide a translation for the North American variant of this book.
Also, I’m going off of a first glance here but I didn’t find a lot of character sheets for the main characters. The one with Zelda shown below is one of the few I found. There’s a couple with Link but I didn’t find one with him in his main attire
Poster
Before I get to the poster itself, I want to show this instruction sheet that was packaged inside the box, telling you how to carefully display the poster. They really want to make sure you do it correctly.
The poster comes its own on box. Oddly enough, the art on the front is not the same one shown on the poster.
The poster is wrapped in some tissue paper. I guarantee you that copies of the Collector’s Edition that still have the tissue paper will go for more money than those that don’t. Also, the poster does include a magnet for you to use in hanging the poster up. The magnet’s own wrapping includes instructions, reminding you once again not to screw it up.
With that, I conclude this unboxing. I’ll obviously be spending time with this game and I plan on reviewing it at some point. That said, I got a lot of juggling ahead of me as I’m still trying to progress through other games such as the recently released Honkai: Star Rail. Thank goodness the Switch is portable as I can play Tears of the Kingdom during my commutes.
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