What to do with my hands ... ?

If you had suggested to me at this time last year that the majority of my gaming time would be taken up by my MOBILE SODDING PHONE, I would have looked at you as if you were a cartoon duck who just started talking to me. There I was, arguing all over the place that handheld gaming was limited pretty much to the DS and the DS alone. Sony tried, bless them, but the PSP for whatever reason never really hit the heights it could have done. This is probably due to the Sony philosophy of the last few years of trying to be everything to all people, and not really having a clue who to market their games machines towards. (Hint : The ones who play the GAMES on them might be a good place to start!)

However, things changed quite drastically on my 39th birthday. For that was when my beloved spent far too much money on an iPhone for my present. Naturally, I was completely blown away, but even at that point I had no idea what lay in store. No. Freaking. Clue. Seriously, when Apple hit you with numbers it all sounds a little dry. But, you don't factor in just how big those numbers are at the time. "We have 50,000 games to download." says Mr. Jobs, to which I and every other gamer replied "Yes, but maybe 5% are any good!"

5% of 50,000 is still 2,500. This is probably double the entire library of any of the bigger consoles.

The App Store is, quite simply, the most terrifying thing I have ever seen. It is possible to log in, and then spend the next 3 to 4 hours just looking at things in there. The sheer amount of stuff means that there is ALWAYS something else to see. Games are very much to the forefront of my searches, naturally, but even when not looking for games there are imagination catchers. Muslim Speed Dating? There's an App for that!

Take today as an example. Now, today is the day that The Secret of Monkey Island 2 : Special Edition is released. Available on XBox 360, PS3, PC, and iPhone. Guess which version is the only one that costs less than £5? Yup, the iPhone version. And, the incredible thing is, that even though it is nearly £5, that actually makes it one of the most expensive games available on the platform. The sublime Angry Birds is a mere 59p! For that 59p, you get one of the year's best physics based puzzlers, which at time of writing clocks in at 160 levels. (I shall have to review-me-do that one, actually!)

My gaming time has, to all extents, been totally taken over by my phone. This is completely unexpected, and I am not sure if I like it. (Read as : I love it!) I now find myself wanting an iPad, for no real reason I can discern. The idea of smaller games is not as repellent as I thought, and the idea of cheaper games is just as erection-inducing as I expected. So much so that I will never be without my phone again, and I can actually quite possibly attribute my poor showing as an author over the last 12 months directly to the little Apple beastie that has been in my posession.

I guess that means I should write about the bloody thing more, then...