Electronic Arts snuck the cell-stage-only version of Spore onto the iTunes yesterday. This version of “Spore” is not compatible with the iPhone or iPod Touch. Those are coming soon.

Interestingly, this one controls far better than the iPhone version that I’ve played several times. The accelerometer-based controls there are a little unwieldy, while the iPod version manipulates your cell’s motion with the thumbwheel.

by Patrick Klepek

When we find out exactly what it does, we’ll let you know.

On September 7, Electronic Arts will release its long-awaited and much-anticipated Spore. For many, this will be the biggest video game event of the year, and possibly even the last several years.

Spore, which was first announced in 2005, takes players through the process of evolution, from simple cell-like creatures, step by step, on out into space, is the latest from The Sims and SimCity designer Will Wright.There is little question that Wright is one of the industry's most important figures, as evidenced by the packed houses he always speaks to and the reverence everyone from gamers to other designers to reporters have for him.

"When you give players creative control, you have to expect they're going to do the unexpected," the prolific video game designer said. "Some of it's really good for what they were shooting for. It's amazingly explicit, especially when those creations are animated. We just have to make sure those people aren't messing up the experience for others."

I know that I am in a somewhat unique position, I have played the final release build of Spore, yet I feel that I've only scratched the surface.

I started my 3 hour play session by building a UFO in the Vehicle Editor.  The Vehicle Editor includes parts for all 4 types of vehicles you can design in Spore; land, sea, air and space. Maxis has simply condensed all types of Vehicles into a single editor.  Once my UFO was complete, I decided I wanted to fly it around in Space, so I started a new game.

On the galaxy map there were 5 planets that could be chosen as a starting place, most of them about midway up one of the arms of the galaxy.  Once a starting location is chosen, a new open planet will be produced to keep the available starting options at 5.  I was then prompted to start my new game in one of the unlocked stages.  Since this was a brand new game, and nobody had played through any of it before, I had to pick the Cell Stage...

Please welcome the life-affirming and thought-provoking story of Ken Walters.

Mr. Walters was an engineer who suffered massive spinal and internal damage when a truck driver lost control and pinned him to a wall. He lost his job, was confined to a wheelchair and sank into a depression that lasted 19 years.

Just to add a little relish to his good fortune, he also had two heart attacks. Fortunately, he then suffered a brain hemorrhage.But Mr. Walters' remarkable resilience in surviving such mind-numbing misfortune turned into a mind-altering second life.

One day, his work, which consists of creating mythical creatures of strange and wonderful dimensions, was spotted by EA. The company decided he was so good that they commissioned him to create 100 dinosaur characters for Spore, the new game that's supposed to help your brain.

NetCity is a programmable simulator used to explore the evolution of complex behavior from simple components.

Gaslight simulates a process called stochastic, self-propagating star formation (SSPSF.)

Crowd is a SimCity 4 prototype developed by the Spore prototyping team.