Spore: Create a Universe to Play In

The long-awaited, all-in-one action, strategy, and role-playing game from Sims designer Will Wright delivers on its promise of a "universe in a box"
An asteroid hurtles toward a distant planet. Smacking the surface, the rock sends a blush of glowing red ash into the air. In the steaming gloop left behind, a soup of new life, countless amoebas begin vying for evolutionary supremacy. It's the beginning of the world as they know it—and I feel fine.
The game I am playing is the long-awaited Spore, to be released Sept. 7 by Electronic Arts (ERTS). Spore, of course, is the brain child of Will Wright, the creator of the best-selling Sims series and the closest thing the gaming industry has to its own Einstein—a super-genius with the chutzpah to attempt to devise a unifying theory of everything. Or, in this case, a game that simulates everything from life's first steps to the clash of advanced, space-faring civilizations. Spore is billed as a "universe in a box," and after three years of delays and mounting anticipation, that's exactly what the game makers have delivered.

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