Visit Wydraz’s Spore Monkey for a brand new issue of his swanky PreSpore 2.0 Comic! Already up to issue #11, I wonder if the series will continue under a new name once Spore is released? Hrmmm… enquiring minds wanna know, Wydraz.

While you wait out the final days to Spore’s release (unless you live in Australia and managed to fluke out and get a copy this weekend!), have a look at Voodoo Extreme’s PAX Gallery including this little photo of some folks playing Spore.

Destructoid has an interesting news article up about Spore invading Boston’s Harvard Square subway station. Spore has taken over, prepare for landing! They also point to a number of other pictures on Flickr.

Gamespot has posted 44 screenshots from Spore to their site. They cover quite a lot of ground int he shots, and if you scroll down to August 26th there are also handful of nice ones there.

GameSpy has a funky town video up showing off Spore’s civilization phase, complete with developer commentary. Dig it!

Game Informer chats up Will Wright to talk about Spore from start to finish. A lot of it is standard fair, but there are a few interesting tidbittles in there. For example, here’s Will Wright on the Spore hype and expansions.

GI: How do you deal with the almost impossibly high expectations that people have for Spore? Do you feel that pressure?

Wright: I think it’s too much hype. About a year ago, we were realizing how much hype we were getting and we decided we should start to say that it’s going to suck just to de-hype it. That is a certain amount of pressure. When people don’t know much about something, they tend to fill in the blanks the way you want them to be filled in. That’s true of almost anything. Then, when the actual thing comes out some people will be disappointed that it’s not “hardcore enough” or it’s not “easy enough” or that we didn’t do this or that. We’ve gotten to that point any additional hype isn’t serving us well. It’s a concern.

GI: Do you envision Spore being supported with a lot of expansion packs like The Sims has been?

Wright: I think it will be similar in extent but hopefully not the same strategy we took with The Sims. With The Sims, we were basically selling expansion packs to the same customers over and over. I think Spore lends itself more to horizontal expansion, where we take components of the game like levels or editors into totally different formats and hit people that maybe never even played the hardcore PC game, but would enjoy a lighter experience using one of the editors. Or, using the content in new ways outside of Spore the game. I think we’re going to see Spore expanding in a much wider variety of ways than The Sims did, but to the same extent. Different systems, different game styles, things like that. Once you have this much content there’s a lot of things you can do with it, gaming and otherwise.

Oh wow, it makes this all very real to hear that pre-orders of Spore from the EA Store can begin pre-loading the game now! You can get your download started, then once September 7th hits the game will activate and you will be one of the first to start creating! This is Digital Download for the PC only. To pre-order for Mac you can hit GameTree Online. Pre-orders of Spore from the EA Store also receive $10 off your next purchase from Zazzle.

Appletell shares their experiences with Spore Origins for the iPod. Giving the game a mere 2 out of 5, the reviewer felt that gameplay was too simple and repetitive, and they were also plagued with crashes and freezes. You can read more here.

According to iLounge, Apple has pulled Spore Origins for Click Wheel iPods from the iTunes Store. Released on Momday, the game was exhibiting lock-up problems with both iPod classic and some fifth-generation iPod units, causing the game to stick on the loading screen, and forcing the user to perform a hard reset to remedy the issue. It remains unclear when users can expect the game to return to the store.

A patch has been released for the Spore Creature Creator. You can directly download the patch without using EADM, or get the patch by logging into the Spore Creature Creator (you must have EADM installed).

This is a PC only patch. Mac users should check back next week!

http://www.spore.com/patch

You can also check out the news from the recent Spore Community Day event. You can find out about their experiences here:

http://www.spore.com/comm/updates/update082608

In addition to the two new prototypes released today, Waterboy and GonzagoGL, and they’ve also updated the Crowd prototype in response to community feedback. Check out our prototypes page for more info:

http://www.spore.com/comm/prototypes