EA brings 'Sims' and 'Spore' to DS
I've never been that into <em>The Sims</em>, but it'll be fun to see if you can still drown your characters by deleting their swimming pool ladder.
Since I blogged about which DS games I'm most looking forward to this year, there's been some absolutely stonking news: EA, the world's biggest games publisher, has pledged to release versions of its PC heavyweights Spore, The Sims, SimCity and Theme Park for Nintendo's plucky handheld.
SimCity DS was rumoured last year, so this is just confirmation. And Theme Park has been around on all formats for years -- I had it on the SNES back in the day. Yes, I'm that old. The Sims spin-off, My Sim, will presumably be a slimmed-down version with some Wi-Fi Internet features. I've never been that into The Sims, but it'll be fun to see if you can still drown your characters by deleting their swimming pool ladder.
The really ambitious title though, is the evolution sim Spore. Whether it can use the DS's Internet functionality to interact with other players' civilisations will be the key test. EA gets masses of bad press for pumping out sequels and add-ons to milk fans, but it does have some essential titles, as Keith Stuart points out on the Guardian's games blog. I'm very excited about these -- I've just plugged them into my GameSpot Tracked Games list. W00t!