The much talked about Spore which is being developed by Maxis and Will Wright, the creators of the successful The Sims series, is a god simulation game. When I first heard about the game, it reminded me of another game I once read about. Following a bit of investigation on the Wikipedia I’ve found that there’s two similar games which were published under the Sim brand: SimEarth and SimLife.

SimEarth and SimLife were both fairly commercially unsuccessful compared to the more successful games of the franchise like SimCity.

The Sim franchise was rapidly - arguably too rapidly - expanded following the amazing success of the 1989 SimCity game. The Wikipedia lists 13 Sim games excluding those in The Sims, SimCity or Theme Park ranges! These games ranged from running the US public health system to creating life itself (see SimLife).

Whilst graphically primitive, SimEarth and SimLife seems to share many common principles as Spore. Spore combines many elements that SimEarth and SimLife possess.

For example, SimLife seems to focus primarily on the evolution of species whilst SimEarth focuses on the society which develops on the planet you create but also allows you to observe evolution. Spore seems to place equal emphasis evolution and civilisation.

Interestingly, both Spore and SimEarth feature a monolith which turns species sentient.

Compare the videos of Spore & SimEarth (SNES version). (I can’t find a video of SimLife )
Spore

SimEarth

It’s quite obvious that Will Wright has simply remembered an old idea of his and thought of a much better way to present it. Spore looks much more promising than the Windows 3.x-era games that it’s based upon and I can easily imagine myself getting addicted to it like I have with Civ IV and The Sims 2!

I shall leave you with a quote from The Rig Veda:

Life, death and rebirth are inevitable.

Tags: spore, the sims, sims, video games, video game, simlife, simearth