Before we get any deeper into the rumored Switch 2 hardware, it's worth stepping back and looking at what Nintendo has actually shipped with Zelda branding over the years. This list only counts hardware that got an official regional release — not fan mods, not preorder bonus discs, not the occasional trade-show display unit that never made it to shelves.
| Year | Hardware | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 2003 | Game Boy Advance SP, Zelda Limited Edition | Gold shell with a Triforce on the lid, released around the Four Swords era. Availability varied a lot by region. |
| 2011 | Nintendo 3DS, Zelda 25th Anniversary Edition | Gold with a Hyrule Crest design, timed to Ocarina of Time 3D. As best we can tell this one was Europe/Australia-only and never got a proper North American release. |
| 2011 | Gold Wii Remote Plus (Skyward Sword bundle) | Not a full console, but the accessory bundle that shipped alongside Skyward Sword's launch. |
| 2015 | New Nintendo 3DS XL, Majora's Mask Edition | Lid art built around Majora's Mask, released to match Majora's Mask 3D. |
| 2023 | Nintendo Switch OLED, Tears of the Kingdom Edition | Black-and-gold dock and console with a glow-in-the-dark Triforce, plus a matching Pro Controller. The most elaborate Zelda special edition to date. |
What's notably missing
If you scanned that table expecting to see Breath of the Wild, you're not misremembering — there wasn't a dedicated special-edition Switch for it, despite BotW being one of the best-selling and most acclaimed games in the series. There were amiibo and some accessory bundles, but no console got the full paint job. This next part is speculation, not something we can confirm: our best guess is that the Switch itself was such a runaway success on its own in 2017 that Nintendo didn't feel it needed a collector's-edition console to move units. That's a guess, not a documented reason.
The pattern that does hold up across this list is that special editions tend to cluster around anniversaries (the 25th in 2011) or major single-game launches (Skyward Sword, Majora's Mask 3D, Tears of the Kingdom) rather than showing up on any predictable yearly schedule.
If you want our subjective take on which of these actually looked good, we ranked them in a separate post. And if you're here for the rumored Switch 2 hardware specifically, our main roundup and timing breakdown are the best starting points.