Hijinks Inc.

Author: Fred Smith

  • Top Five iPhone Games That Don’t Exist…Yet

    With the dozens of games already available for the iPhone and iPod Touch, you would think that all the obvious ideas would have been taken already. I mean, we have Tetris, Pool, Chess, Snake..pretty much every cell phone staple you could think of right? Wrong. Here’s five games that no one has ported that are just begging for their time to shine. (more…)

  • Selling EGM Super Smash Bros Brawl Covers

    Are you an avid fan of Electronic Gaming Monthly? Are you a rabid Nintendo fanboy? Do you have too much disposable income?

    If you answered yes to any of these questions, have I got a deal for you. I’m currently eBaying all 12 collectable covers from EGM’s February issue. These covers feature 12 characters from the cast of Super Smash Bros Brawl, and are a must have for any serious collector. I’m shipping worldwide, so come one come all and take advantage of this once in a lifetime opportunity!

    All 12 EGM Super Smash Bros Brawl Covers. Mint!

    Why am I posting this on Hijinks? Well, apart from the shameless self promotion and the Google traffic, these magazines are just part of a larger story that has yet to be told. Stay tuned for that.

  • My Wii Impressions

    So I haven’t posted in a while. No, I don’t blame this on the Wii, but more so on the fact that I still haven’t jail..break…ed (broke, broken?) my iPod Touch yet. In fact I surprised myself with how little I’ve been playing my new toy. The system I bought came with four games not counting Wii Sports, and I had bought Smash Bros Brawl right after I made my original purchase. I’ll break down my experience game by game.

    Super Smash Bros Brawl
    Probably my biggest mistake was playing this first. I loved the original Smash Bros on the N64, and I have many great memories of playing with three buddies hurling insults at each other as our little sprites hurled punches. Great time. I fired Brawl up only to realize that I had to play through the Subspace Emissary campaign to unlock the other half of the cast (not unexpected). Playing through the single player campaign was fun at first, then it got old, then it got boring, and now I just want to finish the freakin’ thing so I can unlock all the characters. Yeah, there’s a metric crap-ton of fan service in there, but 90% of it I don’t get and don’t care about. Just give me the full cast so I can not play it again until I have people to play it with.

    Guitar Hero 3 Wii
    I picked up the guitar, figured out how to secure the Wii Remote in the guitar, and fired up a song. Afterwhich I prompted shut it off. It’s fine, it’s Guitar Hero, and it’s nothing I haven’t played before.

    Monster 4×4 World Tour
    This is a game in which you race monster trucks. That is what we term as a given. Seemingly the only reason why you would want to play this game is to be able to experience the glorious feeling of controlling your monster truck by twisting and turning the Wii Remote. Coincidentally enough, this experience is neither glorious nor a reason to play the game. I promptly put it up on eBay.

    Tiger Woods PGA Tour 08
    I read 1up’s review before I played the game, and they gave it a good score, mentioning that it was the best golf experience on Wii. Either I suck at golf games or the Wii has set a low bar of what is considered “the best”. Obviously I don’t suck at golf (I was the master at Microsoft Golf for Windows 95), so this game must not be any good. That’s what I’m telling myself anyway. Tiger joined the monster trucks on eBay.

    Super Mario Galaxy
    If I could do it over I would have played this game first and not even tried the other games. I’m only 8 stars in, and this is definitely the reason I was looking for to justify my purchase. I love it, its amazing, I’ll be enjoying it for a long time.

    So in a narrow victory, Super Mario Galaxy saves me from throwing the whole thing back on eBay for a ridicules profit. Hurray for Mario!

  • 75 Skills Every Man Should Master

    Today’s young men are overly feminized, indecisive, binge drinking good-for-nothings who need a backbone and a brain. Or so my grandpa might say. For those of us who endeavor to rise above that description and desire to achieve real manhood, Tom Chiarella has a few things we can work on to get there. My favorite?

    29. Understand quantum physics well enough that he can accept that a quarter might, at some point, pass straight through the table when dropped.

    Sometimes the laws of physics aren’t laws at all. Read The Quantum World: Quantum Physics for Everyone, by Kenneth W. Ford.

    Followed closely by:

    30. Feign interest. Good place to start: quantum physics.

    It’s Esquire, so you know going in there will be questionable content in the general area. You’ve been warned.

    The 75 Skills Every Man Should Master


  • Adventures in Applecare: iPod Touch Dead Spot (Conclusion)

    The Story
    The Update
    The Conclusion

    So I got my iPod back today, and while the email I got on Monday told me Apple couldn’t reproduce my problem, just being in the factory must have done something because the dead spot is no more. The canned letter they sent back with it said that “The perceived fault may have been resolved as a consequence of the test procedure itself (internal iPod software update, reset and restore operations, etc).” Hey, whatever works, I’m sure not complaining.

    Now to jailbreak it again..