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'Spore Galactic Edition' Officially Announced

by Rainier on June 25, 2008 @ 1:47 a.m. PDT

Begin your odyssey at the dawn of life as a simple microbe just trying to survive, then evolve the creature from its microscopic origins into an intelligent, tool-using race, becoming a global civilization and choose whether to hunt or forage, attack or trade. Revealed yesterday, the Spore Galactic Edition includes the game, Making of DVD, How to Build a Better Being DVD, The Art of mini-book, Spore poster, and a 100-page Galactic Handbook.

“The Spore Galactic Edition is the ultimate backstage pass for the Spore universe,” said Patrick Buechner, vice president of marketing, Maxis. “The Spore Galactic Edition is an incredible collection of art, video and behind-the-scenes access to the development team for fans, along with some of the coolest, most collectable packaging in years.”

Unique Galactic Edition Content ($79.99):

  • 'Making of Spore' DVD video
  • 'How to Build a Better Being' DVD video, by National Geographic Channel
  • 'The Art of Spore' hardback mini-book
  • Fold-out Spore poster
  • Premium 100-page Galactic Handbook

Spore gives players their own personal universe in a box. Create and evolve life, establish tribes, build civilizations, sculpt entire worlds and explore a universe filled with creations made by other gamers. Spore gives players a wealth of creative tools to customize nearly every aspect of their universe: creatures, vehicles, buildings, and even UFOs.

In North America, the MSRP for the Galactic Edition of Spore will be $79.99 while the regular edition is suggested at $49.99. Versions of Spore will ship for the PC, Mac, NDS and mobile phones on September 5, 2008 in Europe and September 7, 2008 in North America and Asia.

The next evolution in gaming is upon us. From the mind of Will Wright, the creator of The Sims, comes SPORE, an epic journey that takes you from the origin and evolution of life through the development of civilization and technology and eventually all the way into the deepest reaches of outer space.

Begin your odyssey at the dawn of life as a simple microbe just trying to survive, then use the fun, intuitive Editors to evolve the creature from its microscopic origins into an intelligent, tool-using race. Guide your species as it builds (and the player designs) villages, buildings, cities, and vehicles. Along the way to becoming a global civilization you can choose whether to hunt or forage, attack or trade, be nice or play rough!

All the action takes place in a huge, lush world populated with creatures evolved by other players and shared over SPORE’s central servers. When it’s ready, your one-time pond scum launches into space in its UFO on a grand voyage of discovery, planet forming, or destruct-ion! As you explore and play in this limitless universe of unique worlds, your personal Sporepedia tracks all the creatures you’ve met and places you’ve visited.

Features :

  • Take complete control of your creature’s fate as you guide it through the following six evolutionary phases:
    • Tidepool phase: Fight with other creatures and consume them to adjust the form and abilities of your creature. It’s survival of the fittest at the most microscopic level.
    • Creature phase: Venture onto dry land and help your creature learn and evolve with forays away from your safe haven. Carnivore or Herbivore? Social or Independent? The choice is yours.
    • Tribal phase: Instead of controlling an individual creature, you are now caring for an entire tribe of your genetic craftwork. Give them tools and guide their interactions as you slowly upgrade their state of existence.
    • City phase: Bring your creatures’ race into a new golden era by building up the technology, architecture, and infrastructure of their city.
    • Civilization phase: Once your city is established, your creatures begin seeking out and interacting with other cultures. You can have them do so with an olive branch or a war cry—either way, the goal for your creatures is to unify the planet.
    • Space phase: The time has come to move on to other worlds in your solar system. Make first-contact, colonize, or terraform, then venture further to find other solar systems scattered throughout a magnificently rendered galaxy. A ‘mission’ structure provides new goals and paths to follow as you begin to spread through the universe.
  • A suite of flexible, intuitive creation tools leverages the creative imagination of the player. Creating an entire universe of creatures, plants, buildings, vehicles and planets has never been so easy or so fun. An infinite variety of design choices is just the beginning.
  • The world you explore is populated with creatures, plants, buildings and vehicles developed by other gamers and downloaded from a central database. The server chooses creatures and civilizations that best match your chosen environment, your experience level, and your creature’s ability. In turn, your creatures are uploaded to the server to be shared with other gamers.
  • With procedural animation, your creatures and vehicles move based on how you construct them. They behave and interact based on your input and by their in-game encounters. That means there’s no pre-determined path you must follow—the game evolves based on your decisions.
  • Wonder what another gamer was thinking when they created and evolved a creature? Uncover information about each creature’s origin in the Sporepedia, yet another way to explore the truly endless universe of creative expression that is SPORE.

The Spore Creature Creator gives Spore fans, and those who are creatively curious, the first hands-on opportunity to design their own species and share it with their friends. All creatures designed with the Spore Creature Creator can be imported into the full retail version of Spore.

Spore Minimum System Requirements:

For Windows XP:

  • 2.0 GHz P4 processor or equivalent
  • 512 MB RAM
  • A 128 MB Video Card, with support for Pixel Shader 2.0
  • At least 6 GB of hard drive space

For Windows Vista:

  • 2.0 GHz P4 processor or equivalent
  • 768 MB RAM
  • A 128 MB Video Card, with support for Pixel Shader 2.0
  • At least 6 GB of hard drive space

When launching the game, some Microsoft Vista users may receive a warning about running out of address space along with a link to the Microsoft Knowledge Base. If you see this message, it is recommended that you follow the instructions and go to the website listed in the message to update your system.

For computers using built-in graphics chipsets, the game requires at least:

  • Intel Integrated Chipset, 945GM or above.
  • 2.6 GHz Pentium D CPU, or 1.8 GHz Core 2 Duo, or equivalent.
  • 768 MB RAM

Supported Video Cards

ATI Radeon series

9500, 9600, 9800
X300, X600, X700, X800, X850
X1300, X1600, X1800, X1900, X1950
2400, 2600, 2900
3650, 3850

NVIDIA GeForce series

FX 5900, FX 5950
6200, 6500, 6600, 6800
7200, 7300, 7600, 7800, 7900, 7950
8400, 8500, 8600, 8800

Intel Extreme Graphics

GMA 950, GMA X3000, GMA X3100

Laptop versions of these chipsets may work, but may run comparatively slowly. Standalone cards that are installed in vanilla PCI slots (not PCIe or PCIx or AGP), such as some GeForce FX variants, will perform poorly. Intel integrated chipsets featuring underclocked parts, such as the 945GU, GML, and GMS, will not perform adequately.

Integrated chipsets such as the ATI Xpress and the NVIDIA TurboCache variants will have low settings selected, but should run satisfactorily.

Please note that attempting to play the game using video hardware that isn?t listed above may result in reduced performance, graphical issues or cause the game to not run at all.

The NVIDIA GeForce FX series is unsupported under Vista.

Spore will be available at retailers worldwide the weekend of Sep. 7, 2008!

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