Maxis, an Electronic Arts Inc. studio, has released the Spore Creature Creator, an introduction to the highly-anticipated and groundbreaking video game Spore which will ship worldwide this September.

Available for both PC and Mac, the Spore Creature Creator is a stand-alone product and creativity toy box where players create their own unique creatures, bring them to life with entertaining animations, and share them online with friends around the world, said an official spokesman.

The full version of the Spore Creature Creator will be available for $9.99 at retail stores or by visiting www.spore.com.  A free trial version of the Spore Creature Creator is also available today at www.spore.com.  \

The trial version features 25 per cent of the creature-making parts from Spore and lets players shape, paint and play with their custom-created creatures. Creatures made in the Spore Creature Creator can also be imported into the full Spore game, allowing players to populate their own galaxies when the game ships worldwide later this year.

The Spore Creature Creator lets players create their own creatures, take them on a test drive, snap pictures, and make movies of them. Sharing pictures or videos with friends is as easy as the click of a button. 

Players can also share their creations with others by uploading to the Sporepedia at www.Spore.com.  The Sporepedia is an extraordinarily vast online destination where people worldwide can search for and share Spore creations, comment on other player’s designs, check out celebrity creature creations and much more.

“Today is the day we begin to see Spore come to life,” said executive producer and general manager of Maxis, Lucy Bradshaw. 

“We’re excited to see what players will do with the powerful and intuitive creativity tools we’ve put into the Spore Creature Creator.  Our team will be excitedly keeping an eye on the Sporepedia to check out creations made by players from around the world.”

The ability to upload players’ creations to YouTube has also been integrated into the Spore Creature Creator. Players can import and upload video of their creatures' moves directly to YouTube with only two clicks within the game.

Spore will have its own YouTube Channel where all videos of users' creations uploaded from the game will be showcased for the YouTube community to watch, share, rate and comment on.  Check it out at https://youtube.com/spore.

Love your creature so much you want the entire world to see? Post it to your blog for people to check out, even create an avatar for your favorite social networking site.  And if you want to see your creature come to life in the real world – now you can! Visit www.zazzle.com/sporestore to upload your creature and turn it into a custom coffee mug, t-shirt, magnet, stickers and more!  Zazzle allows you to instantly create cool products for your creature so you can take your creature on the go, wherever you go!

Spore, the highly-anticipated game from the creators of The Sims, 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.

The Spore Creature Creator is rated E for Everyone by the ESRB.  The downloadable demo version is free.  The complete version has an MSRP of $9.99 in North America.

Spore ships for the PC, Mac, Nintendo DS and mobile phones on September 5, 2008, in Europe and September 7, 2008 in North