EA details Spore's 2009 PC, Wii, DS expansions

EA has laid out four different ways it plans to expand its Spore platform this year (and co-opted LittleBigPlanet's 'create, play, share' mantra in so doing) with two new PC games and a new Wii and DS game announced that will let players interact with their creatures in new ways in 2009.

The first (and shown above) is Spore Galactic Adventures, which it says will add "a tremendous amount of variety and depth to the original 'space game'" by letting your creatures beam down to planets and take part in and create new mission-based adventures with unique rewards doled out for each ("from an Energy Blade and Stunning Charm to a Jump Jet"). Created adventures can be shared, as with all things in Spore, with friends.

Targeted toward a younger crowd, the PC's Spore Creature Keeper is something of Spore gone Tamagotchi, with players "nurturing, training and playing with" their creatures, giving them toys and setting up online play-dates to meet with creatures from your friends.

Finally, for its first console outing, Spore will be coming to the Wii as Spore Hero, an adventure game "focusing on creativity and evolution," and utilizing the console's signature controls, and the game will also be returning to the DS with Spore Hero Arena, which, as the name implies, will let players battle their creatures, as with both the Pokemon arena titles and EA's own iPod version of Spore. In this version, unlike the current Spore Creatures DS game, the creatures will be full 3D rather than Creatures' paper-cut creations.

On the whole then: a good shot at expanding the limits of what Spore can be, given the limits of its scope as first released last year.