Tom found it difficult to describe the feelings this scroll evoked in him.
It felt like I had just witnessed a miracle of life in that short span of time.
A life form, starting as a single-celled organism, evolves all the way to become the dominant species on a planet, and finally boards a rocket to travel to the stars.
It's practically the most romantic fairy tale in Civilization.
"I wish there could be a game that could capture this epic process."
Tom placed the scroll on the table with a hint of regret, looked at it a few more times, and then reluctantly rolled it up and put it aside.
That can only remain a fantasy.
If such a work truly existed, it would be a perfect combination of various epic masterpieces.
Let's continue looking inside the box.
Finally, we arrived at the game disc itself.
Unlike previous large-scale games that often used multiple discs, it only used one disc.
"Huh? It's smaller than I imagined."
Perhaps because GAMENOVA wanted to emphasize the convenience of the new model, they didn't use multiple discs this time for the sake of larger capacity.
In addition, as a deluxe edition, it will definitely include small items.
He shook the box and clearly heard something inside, then emptied the box out.
Besides the instruction manual, the most eye-catching items were probably the two small cards.
One of them is simply a similarly cartoonish DNA marker.
Like a symbolic representation of the entire game, it features a classic double helix structure, the eternal code of life.
The other one was a registration card.
The top is empty, but many slots have been reserved.
[Image pasted here]
[Name][ID]:[]
[Creator]:[
[Skills Introduction]:[]
[Vegetarian][Meat-eating][Omnivorous]
It seems to encourage players to record the creatures they create and turn them into these collectible little gadgets.
Although it looks a bit childish and cringey.
But players of this era are into this kind of thing.
The stronger the sense of ritual, the better.
Just as he finished preparing everything in the package, the pizza arrived.
It was still bright outside; there was still some time before it got dark.
It's Christmas season, and he has nothing to worry about today.
Everything was so perfect!
"Then—let's begin!"
In the ocean.
A seabed riddled with cracks.
Some orange things are starting to appear.
First there was one, then two, and then more and more, until they filled all the gaps.
They form a sentence.
[HOW WILL IT BE WHEN...?]
(What will it be like when...?)
A statement with a philosophical flavor.
Instead of revealing the specific background or timeline that should follow "when," the blank space creates suspense.
This statement sounds more like a question directed at the audience.
"If that's the case—"
A typical heuristic question.
Immediately following, light background music began to play, accompanied by deliberately mechanical lyrics:
When you have the ability
A thing that looked like a mushroom cap fiddled with its small fins and slowly turned to face the camera.
It only has one eye.
But its big, round eyes paired with its smiling face with a slight curve are actually quite cute.
Choose the form you will evolve into.
It's time to grow and evolve!
A large clump of purple beans came together, looking just like Mike Wazowski from earlier.
They keep coming together, forming a skeleton, flesh, and skin, and growing eyes and a mouth.
The color also changed from the purple of the big-eyed boy to a more vibrant yellow.
What kind of creature will you become?
The image shows a strangely shaped life form that should never belong to this earth.
It has some kind of horn-like appendage on its head, with two warts on it, and tentacles extending from a central hole.
She had a pair of big, bright eyes with double eyelids, and her gaze was incredibly alluring.
Its nostrils are so big that they could fit the pair of bells hanging from its chin.
If it weren't for the bright color palette and cartoonish art style, this thing would be considered cult classic.
Would you rather hunt or gather?
The scene changes.
That creature had clearly undergone another round of evolution.
Now it has grown hands and is trying to reach out and pick a plant that does not exist in reality, along with its companions.
So why is the towering city hall so bustling with people and all sorts of buildings springing up from the ground?
Life has formed its own city.
Where will we go next? As we leave this planet, beyond the distant horizon, countless spaceships will break through the Earth's surface and head towards the boundless deep space.
"When we all get there~"
What magnificent things will you create?
All the spaceships coalesced into a dazzling nebula.
Finally, just like those orange sea creatures at the beginning.
The traces of these stars have been compiled into words.
How do you plan to create a universe?
[HOW WILL YOU]
[CREATE]
[THE UNIVERSE?]
"Well----"
The opening sequence isn't too long.
The whole thing took less than a minute.
But for Tom, the amount of information conveyed in that short minute was definitely enough for him to digest for a while.
To be honest, this opening is a bit too stream-of-consciousness.
He had envisioned it to be something like the epic and sweeping success of Civilization.
Unexpectedly, the overall style was very cheerful.
Even so, the core content of the entire game has been conveyed.
It truly is the beginning and end of biological evolution.
[SPORE]
[Play the game]
[share]
The button that represents sharing is grayed out.
Tom wasn't surprised by this.
Because he hadn't had time to connect the phone line yet.
This feature seems to be related to online gameplay.
However, he wasn't in a hurry.
That's how you should play games—take it slow and gradual.
The entire title screen appears to resemble the entire Milky Way galaxy.
A giant vortex.
After selecting to create a new game, many stars in the galaxy will light up, available for the player to choose from.
This is the archive location.
Each interactive star is a save point.
Unlike typical games that simply display a list, this design is indeed much more ingenious.
It felt as if I were actually playing the role of a life form existing in some corner of this universe.
Before the game starts, you can choose which stage to begin with.
[Cellular Stage][Terrestrial Stage][Tribal Stage][ Civilization Stage][Interstellar Stage]
It clearly corresponds one-to-one with the promotional video and the contents of that scroll.
"No, there really is?"
Tom looked at the options in surprise.
Although the later ones are currently locked, as mentioned above, once you've reached the corresponding stage once, you can start directly from that stage next time.
In other words----
This game truly integrates all gameplay elements across all stages!
That's a bit too scary.
[Cellular Stage]
From the very beginning. On Spore's epic journey, nurture your creation, allowing it to evolve from a humble aquatic creature into an intelligent species.
Everything went as he had hoped.
[Choose your diet]
[Vegetarian][Meat-eating]
This is easy to understand; he hesitated for less than half a second before decisively choosing meat.
Stop giving me that nonsense, I just want to have some real fighting fun!
Next is the difficulty level selection.
Choose the default normal difficulty level to ensure a certain level of challenge without making it too difficult to learn.
Finally, they named their own planet.
It's actually just naming the save file.
[ Tom No. 1 ]
With him pressing continue, the game finally officially began.
The camera slowly pans across space, gradually focusing on a star in a certain galaxy.
This is probably not the sun.
After all, Tom just randomly picked a location on the galaxy.
While he was still observing the star...
The screen suddenly shook; something was rapidly approaching from behind.
"Whoosh! A huge meteor streaked across the sky, heading towards that blue planet that was different from Earth, but also had land and ocean."
Then.
"BOOM!!!"
If such a massive celestial body were to collide with it, it would be a disaster on par with the extinction of the dinosaurs.
Countless fragments began to fly in all directions, including the ocean.
Destruction, however, also represents rebirth.
One of the fragments slowly sank to the bottom of the water, and then----
"Click"
A translucent little insect crawled out from the shattered meteorite and wiggled its body.
This suddenly reminded Tom of a popular line from the gaming world.
[From the first budding life underwater----]
Because Civilization players love to respawn after diving, this loading screen greeting has become etched in the minds of countless players.
Using it here at this moment is absolutely perfect.
Tom tried it out.
Unsurprisingly, you can move it directly using the joystick.
His little creature is carnivorous and has a ferocious mouth on its head.
But apart from its two eyeballs and a single flagellum on its buttocks, this thing was incredibly clean.
Just look at its whip-like bristles swaying, creating ripples behind it and propelling the little guy forward.
To be honest, his movements were quite nimble.
And clearly, it is not the only guest in this ocean.
Just as he was getting used to the controls, a strange-looking thing swam across the edge of the screen.
Some things, perhaps diatoms or something else, can be vaguely seen in the background.
According to the instructions, the progress bar at the bottom of the screen represents different stages of your progress.
You gain DNA points after eating, and when the progress bar reaches the end, you will successfully evolve.
That's not hard to understand.
After all, I'm still just a little Karami.
Although they are carnivores, going out to hunt is not so easy.
Tom dragged his little guy around for a while, but after discovering that even those equally small creatures required Kung-Fu Master to catch, he gave up on the idea.
There were many scattered pieces of floating meat in the ocean.
I wonder if it was just some scraps left over from those powerful predators.
Even these scraps of meat are a valuable source of nutrition for the little guy right now.