Spore Creature Creator
The long-awaited evolution simulator, Spore, from Sims creator Will Wright, will begin rearing its head when the Spore Creature Creator is released on June 17.

Creature Creator will allow would-be gods their first chance to begin constructing, trading, and showing off their own race of beings, which can then be imported into the final version of Spore, due out later in the fall.

A free, if somewhat minimal, demo of Creature Creator can be downloaded from spore.com or a full version, with every creature and tool available, can be purchased at retail for $9.99.

Guitar Hero IV to Have New Instruments

The latest issue of Conde Nast Portfolio, a business mag not known for its investigative video game journalism, may have just let a giant cat out of the bag in regards to Guitar Hero 4 that would make it a much tougher competitor for Rock Band…

CEO of Activision, Bobby Kotick, who was recently interviewed by Portfolio, had this to say about the next Guitar Hero:

“It’s not just about guitars,” Kotick says. “We’ll include a lot of other instruments, vocals. It will help us expand internationally. It’s the first game we’ve had in which we can use local content and local bands.”

While the exact definition of “local content and local bands” has yet to be clarified, we expect to hear a formal announcement on Guitar Hero 4 very soon.

Harmonix, the company behind Rock Band, has the patent on video game drums, so we aren’t sure what Guitar Hero could do to measure up in that regard, but visions of bongos, triangles, and xylophones are filling our heads at the moment…