Obtaining Playstation trophies is a guilty pleasure of mine, which is why a new patent filed by Sony is particularly exciting to me.

The patent application from Sony, available from the NeoGaf forums here

“A method and apparatus for adding trophy support to games that do not have trophies without modifying the original game.

"The method and apparatus are used to detect particular disk access, use the detected disk access as potential trophy triggers in games, and recognise the triggers while a game is played. Trophies are awarded based on the triggers, and the awarded trophies are stored.”

What does that mean? Well, developers are put off adding trophies to games because at present doing so involves modifying the game itself with a patch – look at the addition of trophies to Metal Gear Solid 4 last year.

With this new device, adding trophies will become far simpler and cost effective.

So, many of Sony’s classic titles could potentially be given trophy support – from PS One classics right through to the first wave of PS3 games. Imagine trophies in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, or getting a 104 per cent complete trophy for Crash Bandicoot: Warped! Exciting stuff.

I’ll admit the likelihood of ALL games getting trophies added seems unlikely, but you would think the biggest, most popular old-school titles would receive trophy support. I’ll be annoyed if I have to get 100 per cent completion in San Andreas again though.

Are there any games from previous generations you’d particularly like to see trophies for? What would you have to do to earn them? Let us know in the comments section.