Super Smash Bros. For Wii U Bundle

Even more out of left field than yesterday's One Direction post might be seen as, here is the new special $100 bundle for the new Super Smash Bros! Yet another six years in the waiting, I was at GameStop waiting for about six hours before I finally got to hold my copy. And the game, as you might expect, is absolutely fantastic! Hell, a lot of you have probably already played this by the time I post this up... if you have access to Wii Us, of course.

I waited the extra month to get my hands on this, rather than the 3DS version, because I honestly didn't really care about having Smash Bros on the go. I was especially on board once I heard that this game would be compatible with a new Wii U adapter for Gamecube controllers, which is the only real way to play the game as far as I'm concerned. (Unless you're playing the N64 version, of course.)

Oddly enough, I found that the build of the new Gamecube controller included in this bundle felt a bit cheaper than older Gamecube controllers made during the sixth generation. The buttons feel fine and functional, but the plastic mold of the controller feels a bit cheaper than usual, and the wire is noticeably stiffer. A reliance on using molds for third-party controllers, or just working the kinks out from getting back to producing controllers that haven't been produced in seven years? You decide. It still functions well enough.

And as a bonus, I received this sweet cardboard championship belt from the GameStop employees while waiting in line! Unfortunately, it seems to be coming apart a little, but it's embossed! Hell yeah!

The Epic Of Zyklibine: The Complete Edition

As a bonus article for today, here is a sci-fi epic I created in Mario Paint over several long hours in a successful attempt to fix my horrible sleep schedule. The complete 20-piece Epic Of Zyklibine will be presented in the proper order below. Forgive me for the phone-to-TV pictures, but I don't have a capture card to take these with, and forgive me also for the spelling error I gave to Shandrix in one of these pictures.

One Direction's Four (Perfume Sample Edition)

No, it's not Mad, no, it's not Japanese, and yes, I did actually pick this up at a retail store in the States! It is, however, an interesting special edition of One Direction's newest album, Four. This special edition of Four actually isn't based on the Ultimate Edition, strangely enough, but includes a copy of the regular edition of the album, and comes packaged with a perfume sample inside of a large slipcover that wraps around both pieces... exclusively at Walmart, to the best of my knowledge. (In my defense, it was the same price as a copy of the regular edition without the slip or the sample, and our special preorder of the Ultimate Edition still hasn't come in... eurgh.)

I can't say I was entirely pleased with this album, however. Whereas Take Me Home was a noticeable step up from Up All Night, and Midnight Memories was an even more noticeable step up from Take Me Home, One Direction seem to have settled a bit too comfortably into a formula out of the interesting experimentation they did on Midnight Memories. Outside of songs like Steal My Girl, Fireproof, No Control, and Stockholm Syndrome, the album isn't as, dare I say it, interesting as Midnight Memories is. That doesn't mean it's a bad album by any means, but it's a noticeable plateau rather than a step up.

The tracklisting is as follows:

1. Steal My Girl

2. Ready To Run

3. Where Do Broken Hearts Go

4. 18

5. Girl Almighty

6. Fool's Gold

7. Night Changes

8. No Control

9. Fireproof

10. Spaces

11. Stockholm Syndrome

12. Clouds

Now to get down to what makes this edition special, beyond the slipcover: the perfume sample. This is actually where this edition becomes a disappointment, especially for the Directioners that this edition of the album is clearly geared towards; rather than being a sample of either of their newer "You & I" or "That Moment" perfumes, it's actually a sample of "Our Moment", their perfume released before Midnight Memories. Why not include one of the newer ones, when any Directioner who would be interested in picking up this edition would have already picked up "Our Moment" at some point? (Keep in mind, on the shrinkwrapping for this edition is a sticker indicating that a perfume sample is included, but it doesn't actually specify what perfume is included.)

The fragrance of disappointment...

If you want every edition possible of every physical release by One Direction, or you're a nut for slipcovers, I would tell you that you might as well go for it, but don't go for it if you otherwise think you're going to get anything truly special out of it. There aren't any of the Ultimate Edition's bonus tracks, nor are there any exclusive tracks to this edition, it's just the plain ol' jewel case edition packaged with an older perfume that most hardcore fans of One Direction would already have by now.

Return Of Grasshopper, plus the Grasshopper EP

Cocobat is a band I first heard of while watching a TV documentary on Mad from the mid-90s, when Mad was shown covering their song Cocobat Crunch, so I became interested in them pretty quickly. This album, which is (I believe) their fifth, is the first one I picked up, mainly because of the sweet digipak, and the bonuses included. On Wednesday, it showed up in the mail, and I'm glad to say it's a pretty good hardcore album. It's not as good as anything I've heard from Mad or AA= or Wagdug, per se, but I can get into it. It may take a few more listens for me to really love most of the album, since the only thing I'd heard before picking this up was the semi-titular track Grasshopper.

It turns out, in a sweet little bonus, that this copy of the digipak is a promo copy! The inner ring on the disc's label side has "sample" written on it, along with some additional Japanese characters on the other side, overlapping the matrix runout on the disc. It may not be very visible in the picture below... but trust me, it's there. There's also a numbered sticker over the barcode on the back which, while I can't read any of the Japanese written languages, I'm pretty sure it's just something about how it's a promotional copy. I messaged the Discogs seller I got it from to ask them, and that is indeed what that sticker means. Excellent!

The tracklisting for Return Of Grasshopper is as follows:

1. Grasshopper

2. Chinning

3. Valetudo

4. Same Food Makes Same Shit

5. Energy

6. Do The Stretch

7. Numeros

8. Shower

9. Setunai

10. Great Men

11. Far

12. Grab Your Own Shit

As a neat bonus, inside one of the digipak's flaps comes an 8cm CD copy of the Grasshopper EP! As far as I know, this was only previously released on 7" vinyl on July 15th of the same year. Not only is it amazing that this was included at all, on a format it wasn't previously released on, but Toy's Factory actually went to the effort of reproducing the 7" packaging for the smaller package. (At least, I would assume so. I've never seen in-depth pictures of the original 7" release itself, but it seems like this would be it.)

Click to enlarge

The tracklisting for the Grasshopper EP is as follows:

1. Grasshopper

2. Cocobat Crunch

3. Apocalypse Now (Final Conflict cover)

4. Die Die My Darling / We Bite (Misfits covers)

5. Far

Hey, a postcard! Never got one of these inside of a Japanese album before.

Scary single

In an earlier post, I was talking about how the single for Kami-Uta is Mad's most disposable single ever released, since there isn't any additional content to make anyone who isn't a hardcore collector hold onto it. This single, the lead for Mad's final album CiSTm K0nFLiqT..., would be just as disposable if not for the one excellent selling point it has: a mini toy car kit! (I've seen listings for this single online without the car kit, and it isn't worth any price they list it for.) I don't even think I need to talk about the song that much. It's one of Mad's most popular songs; you all know it, you all probably love it, too. I know I do. The CD has one track, Scary in the exact same mix as on CiSTm K0nFLiqT..., so there you go. Done.

Unfortunately, this single is probably my most damaged piece in my Mad collection (look at the pictures below to see the damage on my copy), but thankfully the most valuable piece, the car kit itself, wasn't damaged at all when it came in. What you get is pieces for a black and green Pochi, the exact same small Pochi featured in Medicom Toy's 8-figure Kubrick set for Mad's Osc-Dis-era mascots but recolored like the Pochi that appears in the Scary video. The liner notes booklet for the adorable mini-maxi jewel case (which sadly doesn't fit in the jewel case itself) includes a how-to guide for assembling the little Pochi.

It also has a couple adorable inserts, one an ad for the tall White Crusher figure (which I don't have yet, sadly), the other an ad for CiSTm K0nFLiqT... itself, with the other side showing tour dates from 10 years ago. The car kit itself is inside a plastic holder that has all of the bits and bobs nicely separated from one another.

Why didn't I disassemble the Pochi to put it back in the plastic kit holder, you may ask? The answer is simple: I glued the head onto the body. In either version, this Pochi mold isn't particularly good at holding the slightly heavier head on the body, so if you do anything with either figure, the head is bound to fall off. I once scored a spare (and nearly destroyed thanks to the incompetent postmen) 8-piece Kubrick set, so I have a spare Pochi to glue as the other one sits in the not-destroyed box. I should probably get to scoring another one of these in better condition, now that I think about it...