The Wind Waker 'obsession' that influenced Spore

As a game, Spore was first envisioned through a series of conceptual design inspirations: the logarithmic scale-of-the-universe documentary Powers of 10, the improbability of human evolution expressed by the Drake equation, and more.

When it came to visual design, chief designer Will Wright had other ideas.

One was a bygone era of sci-fi. "Will had been looking at all these early and mid 20th century pulp science fiction [magazines]," says art director Ocean Quigley. "The exuberant era of bug-eyed monsters holding buxom women with rayguns on spaceships kind of thing. [He] had a giant collection of this sort of silly but exuberant pulp art. And he was like, I want to be able to make all these things. I want to be able to make bug-eyed monsters, and I want to be able to make domed cities on the moon, and all the 1930s visions of what the future was going to be."

Another was Nintendo's The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. According to gameplay designer Chris Trottier, Wright was "obsessed" with the game's art style, which used a cel-shaded — or "toon-shaded" according to Nintendo's marketing — style to make 3D-rendered objects look like cartoons.

When Spore shipped in 2008, it didn't look much like Wind Waker, so we asked Wright, Quigley, and Trottier about what happened along the way.