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Spore confirmed for DS, PSP and mobile

Will Wright's amazing Sim-everything game to slip into your pocket next year

Spore confirmed for DS, PSP and mobile
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DS + PSP + Java
| Spore Origins

Yep, we're excited too. Spore, among the most eagerly awaited and certainly the most ambitious game ever made, will definitely be making an appearance on all major pocket platforms next year.

Although there have long been rumours of handheld versions – and EA itself suggested back in July that the game was going to put in an appearance on mobile – it was only this week in interviews with Edge magazine and Spong.com that creator Will Wright actively discussed the appearance of games on different formats, and hinted at the content of the handheld versions.

In Mr Wright's own words, "We're going to do the PC game first, but really, what we're trying to launch is an entire franchise that will be across all platforms."

In case you're not sure exactly why you should get excited (maybe you've been living on one of the game's myriad planets for the last few months), let's go back to basics for a second.

Spore is the latest project from Will Wright, the genius behind all those wonderful Sim games, from Sim City to The Sims. Already dubbed Sim Everything by some sections of the press, Spore takes these life management god games to the ultimate level, by enabling you to create and evolve your own life form from a single cell.

Whilst this might seem like a pretty ambitious game in its own right, it's literally just the first level of Spore. As your creation evolves, you then enter a second Creature phase where you control your engineered life form directly, and actively engage in the trials of life, from hunting for food and battling with potential predators to forming relationships in a herd or pack and even mating.

The next steps see your herd of beasts develop into a Tribe, then a City and ultimately a Civilization, with all the buildings, technological and economical developments and trading or warring interaction with outsiders you could hope for.

If your mind's already boggling at the prospect, the final step is likely to tip you over the edge. Or should we say the Final Frontier, as this ultimate leap sees your civilization develop space transport. This enables them to leave their planet and explore a universe of other worlds, seeking out new civilisations and generally boldly going where no man has gone before. Although that's not quite right, as many of the planets you'll encounter will have been created by other players who, like you, have evolved up from a single spore, making their own decisions and on their own peculiar planet.

As if the discover and interaction with other life-forms (be it helpful or more aggressive) wasn't mouth-watering enough, the game will even enable players who reach this Space stage to begin playing god at a whole new level, experimenting with new life-forms all over again.

That's the PC version of the game anyway. Naturally, neither Nintendo DS, Sony PSP nor even the most powerful of mobiles is likely to be able to cram all these features in. Instead Wright suggests that the portable versions will focus on distinct aspects of the whole experience.

Speaking in this month's Edge magazine, Wright said, "Spore is deconstructable in interesting ways: we can pull out specific levels, like a Creature level, and make it a handheld experience, or take some of the meta cards, and turn them into an actual card game, either with physical cards or on your cellphone. We're looking at different things that all relate to Spore, but aren't necessarily the entire game squeezed into every platform."

Yesterday, Will expounded a little further on the premise in an interview with Spong.com.

Answering questions about the portable versions, Wright said, "It's not so much that you want to take a game and move it to the mobile platform, but you want to take the idea of the game and find out what's fun to do on the mobile platform that would relate to it. If you take, say, a card game, like those Sporepedia cards. You could imagine that type of game would seem a lot more reasonable on a cellphone than simulating a whole galaxy.

"So we can take aspects of the game like that, which are more appropriate for different platforms. But you'll still have access to the whole sea of content, which is cool [...] Pull it from the same database on the PC game, you'd get the same creature in super-high-res, fully animated, while on the cellphone you're just getting a little playing card, but you've accessed the same creature."

Whilst this is one occasion where we'll have to admit to getting most excited about the PC game, it's already becoming clear that the handheld versions – and mobile especially – are likely to play an important part in the Spore experience. Indeed, it might just be that this game becomes the trailblazer for the oft-promised Grail of connected gaming across multiple formats, where you start a game at home and then take elements of it, such as your creature with you to the office on your mobile.

Then again it could develop in a completely different way – the game has just so much potential it's impossible to be sure. In fact the only thing you can be sure of is that we'll be hearing a lot more about Spore in the next few months. If you want to see how it evolves, click 'Track It' now to make sure you don't miss a thing.

Chris James
Chris James
A footy game fanatic and experienced editor of numerous computing and game titles, bossman Chris is up for anything – including running Steel Media (the madman).