Electronic Arts (EA) on Friday announced plans to release Spore Creature Creator on June 17th. Like the full Spore game, which is due out in September, Spore Creature Creator is headed to the Mac as well.




Spore is the latest creation of Sim City and The Sims designer Will Wright. You take control of a life form from its starting point as a microscopic form in a tidal pool through its evolution to higher stages of life, all the way to development of a civilization that eventually takes it out into space. EA announced plans to release Spore for the Macintosh at Macworld Expo in January.

Spore Creature Creator is an add-on that will be released before the full game, on June 17, 2008. The utility helps Spore fans and others to create their own creatures that they’ll be able to import into the full game when its released on September 7, 2008. Users will also be able to share their creature designs.

EA confirmed with Macworld that Spore Creature Creator is coming to the Macintosh as well. An EA spokesperson couldn’t confirm whether the full Mac retail version will be available on the same disc as its Windows counterpart or separately, however.

Spore Creature Creator will be available as a free demo available for download from the Spore Web site, creating critters using one-quarter of the creature-making parts from the full game. A complete retail version will also be available for $9.99 that will unlock all of the creature-making parts in the game.

Electronic Arts has released details on Spore's Creature Stage, the second phase of life in the upcoming evolution simulator from game designer Will Wright.

The Creature Stage is the point in Spore where your customized organism crawls from the primordial goo, grows legs (or arms, or wings) and begins life on land.

The overarching goal of the Creature Stage is to "gather DNA points as you interact with other creatures either socially or aggressively," according to the gamemaker.

Though EA's stated objective couldn't possibly be more ambiguous, it's the next line of the informational packet that's really interesting: "Depending on how you played Cell Stage, your creature will begin Creature Stage with one of three super powers at its disposal."

It's nice to see these stages will translate into some kind of coherent life cycle as opposed to just individual, functionally separate game experiences.

Assuming it avoids further delays, Spore should hit store shelves this September.

In an interview with Guardian Unlimited, Sim series creator Will Wright confirmed that EA is working on a Wii version of Spore, bringing the total amount of confirmed platforms for the game to four - PC, Mac, DS, and Wii. No release date was mentioned, but the PC version of Spore is about six months away. Also in the interview Wright stated then restated his love for Guitar Hero and all things Nintendo, saying that he likes to check things out on Wii and plays a lot of Advance Wars DS. When asked about Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 he said, “the only next gen system I’ve seen is the Wii,” and that PS3 and 360 games feel just like last generation but with small improvements, while Wii “feels like a major jump” and is “the most significant thing that’s happened, at least on the console side, in quite a while.” PC is still his favorite platform though, as he thinks it has the best input method.