Last week, EA planted Maxis' Spore in the minds of North American and European gamers, hoping that its Creature Creator would take root and fester into an obsession on the level of the multimillion-unit-selling Sims franchise. With more than 1 million new species uploaded to the Sporepedia in a single week, it appears as if the spore of Spore is doing its job.

　　Aiming to further germinate the Will Wright-spawned "sim-everything" game, EA and GameStop today revealed the collector's edition for the PC edition of Spore. Titled Spore Galactic Edition, the limited-issue package offers a standard fare of extras, including a "making of" video, the National Geographic Channel-produced How to Build a Better Being DVD, a hardcover concept-art book, a Spore poster, and a 100-page Galactic Handbook.

　　The Spore Galactic Edition adds a $30 premium to the standard PC edition of the game, retailing at the suggested price of $79.99. Spore makes its long-awaited debut for the PC, Mac, Nintendo DS, and mobile phones on September 7 in North America and two days earlier in Europe. A Wii version is also in development and will launch at an as-yet-undetermined date.