If you’ve missed out on the whole Spore Creature Creator phenomenon, now you really have zero excuse to not try it out.

Electronic Arts and Maxis today unleashed the Spore Creature 2D, a web-based Flash program allowing imaginative minds to create a 2-D creature and share it with the world.

The 2-D Creature Creator makes use of over 250 body parts including antlers, wings, limbs, eyes, feet, and heads. Really, you can make anything you want. Give him a couple of heads and too many eyes, it’s your creature!

The best part? When you’re finished playing God you can use your little dude in a cute little mini-game and then share your freak-of-nature with the world via e-card. If you’ve stumbled on this story in the heat of a workday, prepare to do nothing but create all afternoon, as this app is extremely addictive.

Head to Spore2D.com to start

EA announced that Spore’s two Nintendo exclusive sequels shall be released on October 6th, 2009. Spore Hero will be released exclusively for Wii, while Spore Hero Arena will be released on the Nintendo DS.

While the two games are separate, they take place within the same universe. Spore Hero will focus on a hero trying to prevent the annihilation of their homeworld. As the journey continues you can battle and solve puzzles to unlock over 250 new creature parts with unique abilities. This allows you to change the way creatures play and fight in the world, and upgrade your hero until you are the strongest around.

Spore Hero Arena focuses on a lone warrior trying to prevent the destruction of planets in his galaxy. As he hops from planet to planet, he can collect new parts and upgrade while unlocking special abilities.

Spore Hero will be available on Wii for $49.99. Spore Hero Arena will be available for $29.99.

If any game were wild enough to take on the zaniness of Robot Chicken it would have to Spore, and what do you know, that very thing happened.

Robot Chicken creator Seth Green with an all-star cast of writers behind him teamed up with EA and Maxis to bring exclusive Robot Chicken-written levels‚  to Spore Galactic Adventures as a free downloadable add-on when the game releases June 23 and we have the hilarious video to prove it.

I got a chance to meet with Seth Green, Breckin Meyer, and the rest of the production crew of Robot Chicken at New York Comic Con in early February and if anyone can produce non-stop laughter and total hilarity, it’s these dudes for sure. Take a look at the video below and you’ll see what I mean.

Why make new games when a perfectly good original is available for rampant spin-offs?

Electronic Arts and Maxis today announced Spore Hero and Spore Hero Arena-two creatures built from the ground up for Wii and DS due out this fall.

As you’d probably expect the major components of both titles are creativity, exploration, and adventure-but you know, in a different way than Spore itself did.

Both Nintendo exclusive games are due out this fall at a to be determined price.‚  What we do know however are key components to each title.

Spore Hero, the Wii-make, is set in a 3-D world (could it not be?), is story driven and allows creators (gamers) to build a character through a modified Creature Creator toolset and embark upon an epic quest filled with battles, puzzles, and humor.‚  The end goal is to, you know, save your planet from total destruction-how clichƒ©.

On the portable side of things, Spore Hero Arena is much like its big brother in that gamers will create a “gladiator” and bolster his abilities, parts, and upgrades as fighters throughout the universe are conquered through arena-type battles. ‚ Best of all, Arena will allow for 4 player local multiplayer and 1 v. 1 via Wi-Fi.

If I can pull myself away from the highly addictive creature creator on PC I may just play one of these.

There is something oddly alluring about creating newfangled and unique creatures that clearly resonated with fans everywhere as Electronic Arts and Maxis today announced the 100 millionth Spore Creation has been built since the titles’ launch last summer.

To break that figure down further, about 307,000 creations are uploaded to the Sporepedia each and every day.

And of that lofty 100 million figure, 31,017,761 are franken-creatures, which equals 19 times the number of known species on Earth.‚  However, if EA hadn’t banned “sexual deviant” creatures (we’re looking at you genitalia resembling creatures) the figure would undoubtedly be significantly higher.

Check out the Sporepedia to see the millions of creations.

And if you’ve never ventured to the Spore side of life, a free trial of the Spore Creature Creator can be downloaded here.

Think you have what it takes to create Spore’s latest and greatest application or widget?‚  Want a free NVIDIA driver, or copy of Spore and Galactic Adventures?‚  If that sounds like you, enter the Spore API contest, and your glory will forever be remembered as equal to the imaginative prowess of Will Wright himself! Well maybe not, but still well worth your effort if you posses an uninhibited mind and tech know how.

Make use of the vast Sporepedia to build your app from scratch or download the source code here.‚  Either way, your wildest imagination is your only constraint.‚  Spore, the award winning, imaginatively limitless title, was spawned on ingenuity and aims to continue that success with Galactic Adventures, releasing later on this year.

If you must borrow on the ideas of others, check out this gallery, created by the Maxis team‚ with the Spore API, including a creature battle, aquarium, and a buddy browser.

I was sold on the creature creator, available for free download here, which allows you to fully create a totally unique creature, teach it to dance, and show it to the world.‚  Thank goodness evolution didn’t happen the way I imagined or the world would be inhabited by yellow, one-eyed monsters. Phew.

How to Submit:

• To enter, e-mail a link to your application to: MaxisSaguaro@Maxis.com
• All original applications created using the Spore API will be accepted, and you can enter as many applications as you’d like!
• The deadline to submit your app is April 6th, 2009

Prizes:

Grand Prize: NVIDIA graphics card

First runner up: Copy of Spore game and Spore Galactic Adventures

Second runner up: Copy of Spore Galactic Adventures

For full submission guidelines and contest info, visit: http://www.spore.com/comm/contests/

The next evolution in the Spore franchise is coming.‚  Maxis has announced the next installments of the immensely popular game, which will be appearing on PC, Wii and Nintendo DS, depending on which title(s) you decide to buy: Spore Galactic Adventures, Spore Creature Keeper, Spore Hero or Spore Hero Arena.

Spore Galactic Adventures will be a serve as an expansion pack to the PC original title.‚  Along with adding even more customization and creation possibilities, Galactic Adventures will also bring some interesting and welcomed elements to the series as well.‚  One of the most intriguing features will be the “adventure creator” where players can develop missions, play them and share them with friends.

Spore Creature Keeper will be an installment perfect for those younger Spore players.‚  Unlike Galactic Adventures, Creature Keeper will be a stand-alone PC title and will have a large focus on the social and rearing needs of your character.‚  Also, kids should have a blast with the extensive variety of items like toys, clothing and other doodads.

Spore Hero will allow fans to play Spore on Wii for the very first time.‚  The Wii controlling scheme inspired Maxis to build an entire new title of the franchise “from the ground up”.‚  Expect good things.

Spore Hero Arena, a Nintendo DS title, will look to continue the momentum that Spore Creatures started last September.‚  Hero Arena will give fans a chance to create 3D characters (rather than the simple 2D models in Creatures) and battle foes from different galaxies.

All in all, the new evolutions of Spore seem have enough similarities for fans to purchase just one of the titles while having just enough variability to validate buying all four.‚  The potential of the gameplay on the Wii is exciting while the “adventure creator” in Galactic Adventures should make the franchise as addicting as ever.‚  All the titles are expected to be released in 2009.

From EA:

CREATE, PLAY AND SHARE WITH SPORE FRANCHISE AS EA UNVEILS DIVERSE SOFTWARE LINE-UP FOR 2009

Four Unique Launches Prove that Possibilities in Spore are as Infinite as the Cosmos

The Spore franchise is evolving! With more than 65 million pieces of user-created content shared online, fans from around the globe have gravitated to the game’s powerful creativity-centered experience and massively single-player content sharing site. This year, the award-winning Spore franchise continues to evolve as Maxis, an Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ: ERTS) studio announces four new titles, each designed to deliver a unique experience to a specific audience; Spore¢â€ž¢ Galactic Adventures, Spore¢â€ž¢ Creature Keeper*, Spore¢â€ž¢ Hero* and Spore¢â€ž¢ Hero Arena*. This roster offers unique gameplay for space hunters, creature creators and action adventurers, proving that Spore has something for everyone “" gamers, kids and Nintendo fans alike.

“Last year was a very exciting year for Maxis with the release of Spore. We were overwhelmed by the massive response to the game from the millions of people that created, shared and played in the Spore universe,” said General Manager of Maxis, Lucy Bradshaw. “This year we’re going to experiment with new experiences that extend the powerful creativity tools of Spore to all-new audiences. With the universe as our backdrop, the only limit in the Spore universe is your own imagination.”

The next big bang for Spore on PC comes this spring with the deeply immersive and customizable expansion pack, Spore Galactic Adventures. Spore Galactic Adventures adds a tremendous amount of variety and depth to the original “space game” in Spore, allowing players to beam down to planets, play mission-based adventures and even create their own customized adventures for the first time. Each adventure has a unique reward to upgrade a space creature with special accessories “" from an Energy Blade and Stunning Charm to a Jump Jet and more. Players can fight their way to victory as a Warrior, dance with new friends as a Bard, and much more. With an almost unlimited number of user created adventures, there’s more to play than ever before. The “adventure creator” in Spore Galactic Adventures gives gamers the tools to make their own missions and share them with friends via www.spore.com.

Younger Spore fans will have a blast with the Spore Creature Keeper, a stand-alone PC game that has players nurturing, training and playing with their own personally-created creature. With lots of toys, clothes and gizmos to play with, players can pamper their pets to perfection! With Spore Creature Keeper, fans can play with their creation alone or have a play-date online for endless creature fun. Spore Creature Keeper brings all the fun of creature creation to a new level by adding nurturing, teaching and social components to the experience.

Spore will make its highly-anticipated debut on the Nintendo Wii with Spore Hero, an all-new adventure game focusing on creativity and evolution that was built from the ground up for the unique controls for Wii¢â€ž¢. Spore Hero takes players on an exciting adventure through a beautiful, colorful world. Spore Hero Arena for Nintendo DS¢â€ž¢ builds on the success of 2008′s hit Spore¢â€ž¢ Creatures and allows players to create fully-3D Spore creatures and take them into battle with an array of other creatures across the galaxy. Spore Hero and Spore Hero Arena offer two all-new Spore experiences available exclusively for Nintendo platforms this fall.

With a a tornado of viral publicity over its pre-released Creature Creator and a hurricane of backlash about walking phalli and borderline copy-right infringement by way of an Elmo with antlers and floating X-wings, “Spore” needs very little press.

What the National Geographic Channel set out to do instead, is inform. With “Spore’s” highly anticipated release September 7, the National Geographic Channel will be releasing a companion documentary called, “How to Build a Better Being.” Which delves deeper into the development of the game’s core mechanics and what they have to do with genetic research and bioengineering.

Will Wright has revolutionized the gaming world once again. A man with big ideas, and in partnership with Electronic Arts, they have made a galaxy-wide impact with his newest multi-genre, massive, single-player game. Users are put forth to evolve their own creature from its origins as a single-celled organism to a space faring civilization, with plenty of room for evolution in between.

“One of my goals for this whole thing has been to give somebody an awe-inspiring global view of reality, almost like a drug-induced epiphany with a computer. The kind of, ‘Oh, man, what if we were a molecule inside of a galaxy?’ type thing,” Will Wright said, explaining the scope of Spore.

A precursor to the full game came out this summer called “Spore: Creature Creator,” which allowed users to custom create a simulated organism and raise it to their every unique specification. Which in turned spawned some of the weirdest, most original creatures ever to grace the Internet, and that’s saying something.

User-created videos began to spring up on video social-networks like YouTube. Some creations looked like dogs and cats, yet others had no discernible mouth or even head. In some cases, the creator of the creature was so skilled as to create accurate representations of a specific piece of male anatomy.

The Creature Creator prompted a backlash from a small group of “militant atheists,” and even garnered a full report pm CNN: “Scrolling through the database — past the three-legged sea horse, past the seven-eyed wildebeest and the half-motorcycle-half-pig — revealed something many users didn’t expect. Buried among the more wholesome attempts were two-legged dancing testicles, a ‘giant breast monster’ and a four-legged ‘phallic fornication machine,’ for starters.”

Yet beyond all the simple menus, cute creations, and potential for graphic beast on beast pornography, lies an even deeper story. The framework for a game about creation, life and ultimately playing host to an entire civilization might seem daunting, but Wright and his team had it all covered. Speaking to ZDNet Asia, he expanded on the foundation of Spore. “A lot of it was science, looking at science as a whole, and around the question of Astrobiology and SETI, and how we turned that into an interesting game experience where you look at the entire universe from a very different perspective.”

The National Geographic Channel then took that grand premise and made a documentary focusing more on the technological/biological side of the game. With the motto of “Think Again,” NGC interviewed Will Wright and leading biology scientists in exploring how genetically, we’re all connected.

Scheduled to appear on September 9, at 10 p.m., “How to Build a Better Bring” was written and directed by Ron Bowan, who produced and directed “National Geographic Explorer” episodes, “Python” and “Violent Volcano,” and is Executive Produced by Howard Swartz. The video will be released stand-alone, or it can be purchased with the “Spore: Galactic Edition.”

“It’s kind of a biologist’s dream to be able to design your own animal,” says marine biologist and National Geographic Emerging Explorer Tierney Thys, “to pick and choose the traits of animal groups that you most enjoy … Oh my gosh, I love this.”

Let the cellular revolution begin. Electronic Arts and their Maxis studio announced today that Spore, perhaps the most eagerly anticipated PC game of this decade, has gone gold and will be available for PC and MAc September 5 in Europe and September 7 in North America.

Spore Creatures for DS and Spore Origins for mobile phones will also launch globally September 7.

Spore is the latest project from Will Wright, creator of Sim City and The Sims.

A few commerical tie-ins from EA: Players who preorder Spore or Spore Galactic Edition from participating retailers will receive a coupon good for $10 off their next purchase of custom merchandise at www.zazzle.com/sporestore. For the ultimate Spore fan, the limited Galactic Edition will contain the ‘Making of Spore’ DVD, ‘How to Build a Better Being’ DVD (a 50 minute National Geographic Channel documentary DVD hosted by Spore mastermind, Will Wright), ‘The Art of Spore’ hardback book, an exclusive Spore poster, and a premium 100-page Galactic Handbook.

“We are so excited to finally get Spore into the hands of fans and players,” said Lucy Bradshaw, executive producer of Spore at Maxis. “The Maxis studio has had an absolute blast creating Spore, but the fun is just beginning. The most engaging stories are truly the ones people create themselves, and we can’t wait to see how players not only craft and explore the Spore universe, but hear what stories they have to tell as a result.”

Perhaps the ultimate sandbox game, Spore lets players start from tiny organisms and expand and evolve into a massive, space-faring superpower.

For all the latest Spore news, screens, videos community content, and to try out the trial version of the hugely popular Spore Creature Creator, visit www.spore.com.

LOS ANGELES — Okay, so it wasn’t the most surprising, awe-inspiring E3 ever, but we had a great time and saw some amazing things.

We witnessed a revitalized Atari, a ballsy Electronic Arts and the peak of the music game fad.

Here’s what we took away from the conference:

BEST GAME
Fallout 3
Bethesda Softworks
Xbox 360/PlayStation 3
September

Bethesda built a winner from scratch with an amazing looking Fallout 3. Blast played this game, Blast loved this game. You won’t see a more visually and audibly appealing video game this year. This game is a massive project for any developer, but Bethesda, who saw huge success with "The Elder Scrolls" role playing game series, seems poised to release a game of the year candidate in the fall.

BEST ONLINE GAME
DC Universe Online
Sony Online Entertainment
PlayStation 3, PC
TBA

Comic book legend Jim Lee was the Executive Creative Director of the game and created the visual world DC Universe would be set in based on art from the entire history of DC comics. You get to team up with or fight against Superman and Batman. How cool is that?

BEST HANDHELD GAME
N+
Atari
Nintendo DS and Sony PSP
August 12

With 300 puzzling levels to explore, plus many hidden unlockable ones, N+, based on the hit Flash game, was the best handheld game at E3, and E3 agreed by giving it best in show in the DS and PSP categories. N+ led the charge for a revitalized Atari Inc.

GUARANTEED BEST SELLER/BEST PC GAME
Spore
Electronic Arts
PC
September 7

Within 18 days of the release of Spore Creature Creator, there were over 1.7 million "Spores" created. That’s more than the 1.589 million actual species known to exist on earth, Will Wright pointed out at the EA press conference Tuesday. And that says something about the anticipated impact "Spore" will have when it’s released in September.

BEST WII GAME
Rayman Raving Rabbids TV Party
Ubisoft
November

First game you can play with your ass.

BEST MUSIC GAME
Rock Band 2
Harmonix/MTV Games
Xbox 360, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, Wii
Fall

No real competition at E3. Guitar Hero: World Tour will be awesome too, but Activision wasn’t there this year.

GUTSIEST PROJECTS

Dead Space
Electronic Arts
Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PC
October 21

Mirror’s Edge
Electronic Arts
Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PC
Holiday season

Good work, EA. You managed to stretch your legs and come up with both a bloody horror flick and a FPS where you don’t have ever fire a gun. Both games will either be home runs or total flops (leaning toward an extra base hit) but they’re ballsy! Nice!

M.A.G. Massive Action Game, 256 player online multiplayer
Zipper Interactive/Sony
PlayStation 3
TBA

Another crap shoot. If Zipper does this game right, and we mean JUST RIGHT, M.A.G. could be one of the good ones.

MOST IMPROVED: Atari

BIGGEST LETDOWN: Nintendo

LOS ANGELES – Blood and gore. Sci-fi fantasy. First-person shooter.

Electronic Arts?

Stepping away from its comfort zone, the world’s leading video game publisher unleashed a surprising lineup of titles Monday at this year’s E3 Media and Business Summit.

At a press conference at LA’s Orpheum Theatre, leaders from 12 Electronic Arts game studios including Maxis, BioWare, EA Online and EA Redwood Shores presented a very different lineup than just “next year’s Madden” and “the next Sims game,” that some in the gaming industry have come to droningly expect out of the games giant.

Instead of flash and cinematics, EA went back to basics at E3 this year, doing little things like producing trailer videos from 100 percent in-game footage.

“No Powerpoint, no statistics, no reference to market share or how we’re actually bigger than the other guys,” said CEO John Riccitiello. “[We're doing] something extremely simple. We’re going to have the people that make the games show you the games that we’re making.”

The lineup included not one, not two, but three potentially “M-for-Mature-rated” action games, as well as convincing, encouraging and entirely unsurprising early response numbers for the Spore Creature Creator and an incredibly impressive-looking action/adventure title called “Mirror’s Edge.”

EA Sports was there, but they chose to show off new ways to play their basketball and golf titles. There was almost no mention of the 20th anniversary of Madden NFL, the popular yet stagnant football title.

The action started when EA Redwood Shores chief Glen Schofield took the stage to talk about their upcoming sci-fi survival horror action thriller, “Dead Space.”

“This is a departure for EA,” Schofield said, calling his studio’s game “Very, very M rated.”

The game casts you as unsuspecting engineer Isaac Clarke, who, on a routine mission, finds the space station he was visiting ravaged by evil, disgusting aliens.

“We pushed extremely hard on the horror elements,” Schofield said. “The core gameplay mechanism is ‘strategic dismemberment’ – the clinical term for ‘you have to tear these creatures apart limb by limb in order to kill them.’”

Gabe Newell, co-founder and managing director of Valve later discussed another upcoming EA action horror game called Left 4 Dead, a heavily multiplayer title, where the game’s artificial intelligence changes the storyline and difficulty based on how poorly or how well you play.

At the end of the briefing, Riccitiello announced that EA was partnering with id Software, the company that invented the first person shooter video game genre with the game “Wolfenstein 3D” and later made “Doom” and “Quake.”

The partnership ushers in a new open-world game called Rage, which combines elements of action and driving, in a “Grant Theft Auto” meets “Mad Max” motif.

Attention was also centered around Will Wright’s upcoming “Spore” game, where players make and control their own creatures in a virtual world. Wright’s Maxis division of Electronic Arts released the “Spore Creature Creator” a few weeks ago to let fans start to dabble in the game and make up their own sets of creatures before the game’s official release in the fall.

“I was hoping we could get around 100,000 [creatures] by September,” Wright said. Within 22 hours, they had surpassed that number. There were over a million within a week.

Within 18 days, there were over 1.7 million “Spores” created. That’s more than the 1.589 million actual species known to exist on earth, Wright pointed out. And that says something about the anticipated impact “Spore” will have when it’s released in September.

Electronic Arts had a busy week as we have reported, and reported and reported, but three more game announcements are worth taking note of.

First off, EA Sports announced Thursday that NCAA Football 09 will be the first college football title on the Nintendo Wii when it hits shelves later this year. It will join the PSP, PS2, PS3, Xbox 360 and most likely PC/Windows platforms.

With the announcement comes a contest — fans can vote on their favorite college mascot that will grace the game’s cover.

"Nintendo is excited to have NCAA Football 09 available for Wii.  In my family, NCAA Football has always been a family event," said Steve Singer, Nintendo of America’s vice president of Licensing.  "Now with the Family Play mode from EA we can share the football experience all year long."

Voting for the cover mascot cloes March 6, and the winner will be announced March 14.

EA’s highly successful Sims maker Maxis will launch their new game, Spore, on the PC, Macintosh, Nintendo DS, and mobile phones on the weekend of September 7.

Taking their city building simulations to the next level, Maxis promises that 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 created by other gamers,” EA/Maxis said Tuesday. “Spore gives players a wealth of creative tools to customize nearly every aspect of their universe: creatures, vehicles, buildings, and even UFOs.  Players can then seamlessly share their creations with the world or explore infinite new galaxies created by other gamers.”

“The wait is almost over,” said Maxis Chief Designer Will Wright. “We’re in our final stages of testing and polish with Spore, and the team at Maxis can’t wait to see the cosmos of content created by the community later this year.”

Finally, Mass Effect will hit the PC platform in May. The Bioware-produced action epic has found critical acclaim on Xbox 360.

“Published by EA and re-designed for the PC, Mass Effect invites players to take the role of Commander Shepard as they set out on an adventure to save the galaxy from imminent destruction,” EA/Bioware said Tuesday. ”Wrought with treachery, heroism, difficult decisions and a universe filled with unique and colorful species, Mass Effect delivers a truly compelling storyline.”

The PC version of Mass Effect will feature detailed, high-resolution graphics, customizable controls and a new decryption mini-game.