So today is my birthday. Before you ask, yes I’m older than you and no I won’t tell you how old I am.

As I can never be sure what I’ll get in the way of presents for my birthday, I always make sure to get myself that one extra special thing that I super mega really really want. Now some of you may remember me writing about my little console family back in August. It feels like it’s been an eternity since I wrote that post, but it’s finally happened.

My family is complete.

Of course to compound the assualt on my bank account, there is a Zavvi going out of business right next door to work too. So within about 3 days of buying the PSP I have a mini library of games already accumulating. I tell ya, 25% off sales are evil!

I love my sleek shiny piece of wonderful Sony technology. I still love my DS, but this is a new piece of joy with new games to play. Speaking of which, no games can now escape my little gaming addiction. I can play all of them! All of them I tell you! All of them!

Achievements… all old hat by now. We all know that when it comes to the Xbox 360 you can’t escape them, (unless you really really suck!), and now the PS3 has trophy whores begging too. I was amazed to find the other day whilst playing some “casual games”, (aka Shockwave games that inevitably end up on Xbox Live if they’re any good), and an achievement popped up. Now, don’t worry Microsoft haven’t hijacked Shockwave. It didn’t make the noise or pop up in the all too familiar box, but it was there. Intrigued I delved deeper…

The game in question is Bumper Stars; a highly addictive puzzle game in which you have limited shots to bounce your bumper round to collect fruit with various barriers and the like. You begin life as a beaver, (hey I can think of worse animals to start as), but this beaver is incredibly obese and is therefore your starting bumper. As you continue the game blissfully clocking up the hours you start to notice a few things pop up. The more games you play the larger choice of bumpers you have to pick from, with my current choice being a rabbit in a crash helmet!

Additionally skilled shots warrant a picture appearing at the top of the game window alerting you to the fact that you have just unlocked an achievement! Some create new bumpers and some seem to be there simply to boost your pride, working in a similar way to the Microsoft achievements.

A lot of people have argued that eventually people will stop caring about achievement points/trophies/whatever they come up with next, but if I can no longer escape them even on shockwave.com aren’t we all doomed to have more and more of our lives taken over by them?! …Coming soon “achievements at work day.” Greet 10 people in a polite manner before taking a seat = 20 points. Reach a thousand points and go home early; why not you must have finished off most things!

Since we can no longer borrow money I guess our only option is to win it. I mean we can’t possibly work hard and earn it, live to a budget and maybe make some savings… no that would be ludicrous. We have been raised on buy now pay later, interest free credit and all those shiny plastic cards that fill up our wallets. We like free cash, we like cash that doesn’t seem to affect our bank balances for at least a month, oh yeah and we like games!

So they have raised the level of prizes that can be won from slot machines. They being the government and we being people who play slot machines. So not me then. However I was roped in to reading about this news from the statement that the Department for Culture, Media and Sport feels this move will ease the difficult trading conditions currently affecting seaside amusement arcades.

Ummmmm… looks like fun…

Seaside amusement arcades? I thought they had all shut down. I don’t mean recently either, I thought they had all shut down years ago. Obviously I didn’t think places like the Trocadero, upholding the bright lights and happy faces of a proper arcade, had gone. But seaside arcades?! Sadly the mere words instantly sum up images of slum and squalor in my mind.

So is this move to raise prize possibilities really going to make them buzz again? I think not. What the arcade industry desperately needs is new carpets and better lighting. They need to fix their broken shop fronts, remove the sickly drug dealing teeenagers and ask the dying old lady in the back to leave. It may seem harsh and I would like to think that arcades are about to get their second life, that we will all be queueing along the seafront to shoot zombies with plastic guns. But I have to say that for me it’s going to take a whole lot more then the smell of distant prizes.