Big Spore News
I first heard about Spore three years ago but didn’t really take notice until about a year later when Will Wright’s presentation from 2005’s GDC was made available online. I was instantly hooked and committed to playing it when it was released. The trouble was, even at the time, it was at least a year from release. So I allowed myself to forget about it until May of last year, when EA announced that it was going to be delayed at least another year. Disappointed, I let it drop off my radar again.
As of yesterday, it’s got my attention again in a big way. A release date has finally been announced: September 7, 2008. Even better, a creature editor will be released ahead of time so you can hit the ground running when the full game is released. There’s also news about the Nintendo DS and mobile phone versions of the game and a new interview with Will Wright. Joystiq has collected all of their Spore coverage here.
For those that don’t know, Spore is a sim/god game that combines elements of games like Pac Man, Populous, Sim City, and Civilization. The about page of the official site gives a simple description of the game and its various phases, but I think the best way to get an understanding of the scope of the game is to check out Will’s GDC presentation from 2005 that I embedded in this post. It’s long but also fascinating.
Ian said,
February 16, 2008 at 1:47 pm
I have been awaiting this release almost as long as you have. I even built a custom PC with Spore in the back of my mind. If this gets pushed back again, there will be a great amount of people considering just not buying it at all, figuring that they’d just wait until the price comes down. What would another year really be? I myself will be buying it as soon as I can, it just looks amazing!
Lisa Arnold said,
June 16, 2008 at 4:00 am
Personally I won’t be buying it, don’t get me wrong I’ve been waiting a long time for the release of it, but I know that they have a newer version of the Copy Protection called SecuRom on it. This version has already caused havok to many sims2 players when it was put in the Newest FreeTime Patch which is an Expantion Pack for Sims2. Peoples PC’s are not having a happy time with this new Copy Protection, it interferes with cd/dvd burner software – some burners are now not able to burn on any disc for any reasons, it interferes with Anti-Virus programs because it needs to find a way out to call home to report whether it’s a genuine game your trying to play or not, so it disables some areas to bypass your protection. I wants you to disable all emulation software in your PC or it won’t let you play the game you paid for. No Sorry I value my PC too much to take any risks.
Mox said,
June 21, 2008 at 7:09 pm
I am well aware of what these newer copy protection schemes can do, and I don’t blame you for not wanting to put up with that. (I started working on a post about this very subject back when the news of copy protection for Spore and Mass Effect got out and I hope to finish it soon.) If it’s an option, you may want to consider one of the console versions.