Videogame publishing giant Electronic Arts and developer Maxis today announced that Spore has gone gold, indicating that the game is on track for the planned September 7 release.

Following years of development, the "universe in a box" of Sims creator Will Wright is finally ready for its debut and publisher Electronic Arts has high hopes with Spore, expecting it to achieve at least the same level of popularity as the SimCity series. It certainly has the potential to become one of the milestone releases of the videogame industry.

Spore lets players to create their own creatures, environments, and even planets in an effort to successfully manage a universe through five phases of evolution. Earlier this year, Electronic Arts released a free tool called Spore Creature Creator that allows users to play around with the creature creation feature.

When starting a new game, users can only play with single-cell animals, which, however, can be evolved to intelligent beings that conquer other planets. The player has a number of creative tools at his disposal to craft creatures, buildings and spaceships. Players establish tribes of creatures and build entire civilizations. But the real fun clearly with exploring the universe and discovering creatures created by other people.

Spores will launch simultaneously for the PC, Mac, Nintendo DS, and mobile phone platforms, and is rumored to head to the Wii, too. It will come in two versions, a standard release and a more expensive "Galactic Edition" that includes a 100-page Galactic Handbook, an exclusive Spore poster, a hardback book titled "The Art of Spore", and two DVDs.