Just got a copy, been looking so long to find one for cheap and the day finally came that it was on the shelf in Savers lol.  yay!

Anyways something weird about it not sure if its how its supposed to be or what.  First time I fired it up OoT and Majora's Mask would run fine, but Zelda 1 and 2 would not.  Trying to load them would just restart the GameCube which was a bit unsettling.  The disc has some light scratches so I started to think maybe that's why.  Cleaned it up best I could but no difference.  So I decided to hook up my platinum GameCube and try it out and it worked!  Now I started wondering if my daily driver black GameCube had a problem.  Then it dawned on me that when I was trying it in the black GameCube it had a memory card inserted while the platinum one did not.  I tried the black again without the memory card and now it worked fine.  It gave me the prompt to insert a memory card if I want to create a save file and I did. 

Is this working as intended?  Zelda 1 and 2 will not load up if a memory card is inserted?  Thanks

thats possible but i would clean your laser on your game cube. just get a q tip and windex

Yes, I should have mentioned I also tried cleaning the laser when I cleaned the disc.  Didn't seem to make a difference. 

The problem was definitely related to the memory card being inserted when I tried to start Zelda 1 and 2.  Its 100% reproducible everytime.  I would really appreciate if someone else with this game could try and see if they have the same problem.
 

I will try and check this out tomorrow if no one has been able to by then.

Did you try another memory card?

I actually don't have another memory card on hand right now.

Thanks, that would be much appreciated.

I tried starting The Legend of Zelda with a memory card inserted. I was prompted to create a save file. The file was created, I named my file and started playing without issue. This was with a madcatz and official memory card.

I wonder if something is wrong with your memory card.

Hey thanks for checking for me.

I'll try to format the memory card later and see if it makes a difference. Would be nice to know the cause.

No problem. Let me know if you want me to try anything else.

hmmm did you try cleaning the memory card contacts and game cube contacts too? did you try a different memory card?

I haven't had a chance to get back to troubleshooting this, but should be able to tonight.

You could always boot up the cube without a game and check in the memory manager. There might be an old corrupt save on it so just deleting it might fix the issue.

Thanks for the suggestion, I will check it out.
 

Strangely this problem seems to have just gone away. I deleted the game's save file and when i tried it again it worked fine with the memory card inserted. I guess from starting the games without the memory card inserted, then inserting when prompted resolved any issue. Thanks for the suggestions.