Crispy Gamer News

Just when you thought the “Spore-nado” had finished tearing its path through the gaming world, Electronic Arts today announced the development of a Space stage expansion pack and the new Spore Creepy & Cute Parts Pack, both designed to add to the already expansive life building experience in Spore.

The currently unnamed space expansion is scheduled for a Spring 2009 release, and will allow Spore players’ creatures to beam down from their spaceships to explore new planets and earn rewards for completing challenging missions. The expansion will also include a new Adventure Creator, allowing players to build and share online their own custom missions.

Meanwhile, much sooner on the calendar, the Spore Creepy & Cute Parts Pack is on tap for worldwide release on November 18th. The pack will provide more than 100 new creature-building components themed in two distinctly different styles: the ‘Cute’ side, with animated, cartoon-like creature parts and the ‘Creepy’ side featuring a more frightening, parts line-up.

“Spore is an incredibly personal and customizable experience,” said Lucy Bradshaw, general manager of Maxis studio. “Many of our fans have asked us for even more tools to build with, while others are looking to extend their gameplay. As soon as we wrapped up Spore, we turned our focus to creating additional content that caters to fans’ individual tastes. With the cosmos as our backdrop, we can take Spore in almost infinite directions, constantly changing and evolving the experience.”

What do Scott Jones and Will Wright have in common? Well, they both enjoy video games (from different perspectives one would guess) and they both appear in a video segment about Mr. Wright and his new game Spore.

The segment aired as a web exclusive last week (Sept. 18) on CBSnews.com. CBS News science and technology correspondent Daniel Sieberg talked with Will Wright about his popular “god-like” games including his latest game Spore. Scott jumps in to offer his perspective on why Will Wright’s games are so popular - as an added bonus. You can check out the video after the break.

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From “you might give a damn” department comes word that Electronic Arts will release Spore Origins for the iPhone and iPod touch will be available this month. The game, which will be released on the PC September 7, promises to take full advantage of the devices’ built-in accelerometer . In conjunction with the launch of Spore Origins, EA Mobile also announces a list of nine games in development for both the iPhone and iPod touch platforms.

Spore Origins uses the platforms’ motion-sensing technology to let gamers navigate the primordial ooze on a quest to evolve. Players must prey on the weak and flee from the strong through two modes and 35 challenging levels.

EA Mobile today also announced nine titles in development for the iPhone and iPod touch, including YAHTZEE Adventures, EA Mini Golf, Lemonade Tycoon, Mahjong, MONOPOLY: Here & Now The World Edition, SimCity, Tiger Woods PGA TOUR 09, Need for Speed Undercover, and The Sims 3. Expect to hear more about all these games soon.

If you are excited about Will Wright’s latest endeavor, Spore, then your head might just explode this week because it ships September 7. Spore will be available today in Europe (Germany, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Austria, Finland and Australia), and September 5th in the rest of Europe and South America.

Yes, soon you’ll be able to create your own strange species , build a civilization for them to rule and interact with other races and species created by players from around the world. For all the wonderful creations I hope to see, I also expect thousands of disturbing and strange creatures to invade the Spore universe, many with what some might call “inappropriate” themes. It is going to be fun to see what people come up with in the days and weeks ahead.

While fans try to contain themselves for a mere seven days in North America and three days in Europe, EA is doing everything it can to make Spore the next big franchise since The Sims. One of the ways it is doing this is with a special contest using its game and the creations of a dozens of celebrities including Stan Lee, Adams West, Elijah Wood and more. Participants created their own species using the Spore Creature Creator and uploaded it to www.Sporevote.com, where fans can then log on, view the creatures and vote for their favorite.

Participants (in alphabetical order), after the jump:

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Development on Will Wright’s Spore is finally complete and the game will be released on September 7 in North America (and Asia Pacific) and September 5 in Europe, according to a press release from Electronic Arts. Spore Creatures for Nintendo DS and Spore Origins for mobile phones will also be available globally September 7. Given the power to create virtual life I wonder what kinds of life forms the community create. Once we get past all the goofy creatures that look suspiciously like genitalia, I’d like to think gamers create some truly wonderful creatures.

Naturally, EA has a special edition of Spore for those willing to fork over some extra cabbage; Spore Galactic Edition contains the ‘Making of Spore’ DVD, ‘How to Build a Better Being’ DVD (a 50 minute National Geographic Channel documentary DVD hosted by Spore mastermind, Will Wright), ‘The Art of Spore’ hardback book, an exclusive Spore poster, and a premium 100-page Galactic Handbook.

EA’s Spore team is doing something unprecedented: letting the public play with prototypes used to develop (and explore) components of the game. So what is the definition of a prototype? According to the Spore community site they are stand alone programs that help explore design directions in gameplay, simulation and user interface.

Two of these prototypes are available for fun at the Spore Community site: BIOME and ParticleMan. BIOME is a simulator that allows users to develop simple SimCity style grid simulations, while ParticleMan is a simulates gravitational attraction between particles in a cloud.

you can download both from the community site, and get a lot more background information on both.