Stupid Fun Club is an entertainment think tank developing new Intellectual Properties to be deployed across multiple fronts including video games, movies, television, the internet, and toys.

“The entertainment industry is moving rapidly into an era of revolutionary change,” said Will Wright. “Stupid Fun Club will explore new possibilities that are emerging from this sublime chaos and create new forms of entertainment on a variety of platforms.”

The SFC is owned by Will Wright and EA, both for 50%.

Read Will Wright’s post on the official Spore forums, or read the full press release here.

Initial descriptions appear to indicate that the SimCity Creator will be an “all family” experience (completely in line with the Wii marketing strategy) which will probably mean it will not attract the hardcore City Gamers of SC4 days. However, there is one thing these people may enjoy knowing:

For the first time, take the liberty to build transportation systems with free placement of rounded and curved roads and rail lines, taking your city to new creative and curvy heights.

Read the complete press release and see the accompanying screenshots below the cut

SIMCITY CREATOR, AN ALL-NEW EXPERIENCE FROM THE SIMS LABEL FOR THE Wii AND NINTENDO DS, COMING SEPTEMBER 2008
Create, Enjoy, Destroy Amazing Cities On The Wii; Develop Your City From Ancient Times To The Modern Day On The Nintendo DS

Guildford, UK — May 29, 2008 — The Sims™, an Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ: ERTS) Label, today announced the first details for SimCityTM Creator, exclusively for the WiiTM and Nintendo DSTM. SimCity Creator is an open-ended, highly creative game with a sense of humor that allows players to utilize the distinctive gameplay aspects of the Wii and Nintendo DS to create, enjoy and destroy epic cities. The most accessible and light-hearted game from the SimCity franchise, SimCity Creator will ship on September 22, 2008 in North America and on September 19, 2008 in Europe and Asia-Pacific regions. SimCity Creator is designed to be a city-game experience for families and players of all ages!

SimCity Creator for the Wii™
Be a powerful mayor — create, enjoy and destroy your ultimate city. Start by zoning your city, constructing homes, businesses, factories, skyscrapers, freeways, railroads, and much more. SimCity Creator is a visually exciting experience with a completely new user interface, designed specifically for the Wii and the Wii remote. You’ll discover many ways to customize your city, including 13 city styles to explore, such as American, European and Asian themes. More city styles will be revealed, so stay tuned for more information!

You can also place a selection of more than 30 “Hero” buildings into your city to make it distinctive and momentous. Some of these iconic buildings are based on the current day, some on history and some on fantasy. The more city styles you explore, the more Hero building options you have.

For the first time, take the liberty to build transportation systems with free placement of rounded and curved roads and rail lines, taking your city to new creative and curvy heights. And get a new perspective on your cityscape from a helicopter, a jet or a propeller plane which you can use to fly over your creation. Check out what you’ve built in your aircraft of choice!

Disasters that players of SimCity always love remain an important and entertaining element in SimCity Creator. Using the Wii remote you can create earthquakes, tornados, call in destructive robots and monsters, create fires and discover many more ways to cause havoc. You created it, and now you can destroy it. With hours of fun and replayability, the fate of your city and its citizens are in your hands!

SimCity Creator for Nintendo DS™
Guide your city from ancient times into the future with SimCity Creator for Nintendo DS. Evolve your city through time, starting with ancient times, the middle ages, modern times, present day and the future. Four play modes are available, Challenge, Free Play, Chance Encounter and Gallery, giving options to make the game as challenging or as creative as you want. Earn epic landmarks along the way to enhance your city and mark your progress into the next era. Choose your path through history and make a city for the ages.

“SimCity Creator for the Wii and Nintendo DS brings two separate, delightful new ways to create, enjoy and destroy your own cities,” said Rod Humble, Head of Studio for The Sims Label. “On the Wii, for the first time in the SimCity franchise, you will have the ability to build curved roads and differently shaped zones allowing you to make more authentic places all utilizing the motions of the Wii remote. Employing the new city advisor system, you will be able to make the game as complex or simple as you want. On Nintendo DS, we will give you the ability to make a city develop through time and to overcome the different challenges each era of urban development presents. I know both long-time and new SimCity players will enjoy these innovative experiences in SimCity Creator starting this September!”

SimCity Creator will be available on the Wii and Nintendo DS on September 22, 2008 in North America and on September 19, 2008 in Europe and Asia-Pacific regions.

Product Specifications
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Platform: Wii/Nintendo DS
Ship Dates: September 22, 2008 in North America; September 19, 2008 in Europe and Asia-Pacific regions

A lot of thanks to Nique for providing the mp3′s!
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• a new disaster in the form of a UFO attack
• several fixes to the Strategic Gameplay modes that were introduced with the second patch
• fixes to several bugs
• everything that was in the first two patches

The complete update notes are described in a pdf that’s downloadable from the official site.

Today Electronic Arts Inc. unveiled SimCity™ Societies Destinations, the first city pack in the popular SimCity Societies line-up of games.

As shown earlier at the official site, the focus of the City Pack is on tourism:

The city pack add-on moves the SimCity Societies experience into exciting, new – and sometimes exotic—locales, allowing players to create the perfect vacation spot.

In the words of  Rod Humble, Head of The Sims Studio

SimCity Societies Destinations is the perfect game to let your imagination go on vacation, while at the same time provides deeper, challenges for the player. Whether you want to forge a mini republic or build a spiritual retreat, you’ll have all the tools to make your destination admired by citizens far and wide.

The press release comes with a set of screenshots:

From unspoiled nature parks with campgrounds and hiking trails to tropical beach resorts with water sports and fine dining, from humble county fairs with hay rides and midway games, to sprawling modern theme parks with all the bells and whistles, you’ll build an entire city based on attracting visitors, and keeping them entertained and satisfied.

Create amazing destinations — Turn your romantic city into a tropical beach resort, your authoritarian city into a banana republic, or your meditative city into a spiritual getaway for the rich and famous. Create attractions that are high class or low brow or bizarre.

More than 100 new buildings with new abilities, from 5 star beach resorts to UFO crash sites.

More than 35 new special Sims with new behaviors – traveling business men, religious pilgrims, political devotees, cult members, adventures and more.

New tourism and tourist functionality – Make your city attractive, working to bring more visitors who bring in more cash to our city’s coffers.

Expanded transit functionality, including air and water travel.

New reviews by Zero Punctuation appear every Wednesday on the Escapistmagazine.com

Update: screenshot of the ordering page in question in case it mysteriously disappears:

• A new disaster in the form of an Alien Attack
• An easier way to locate buildings that are on fire, and finding fire stations to start fighting the fire
• New ways to sort buildings in the building options menu
• Fixes for performance issues, especially on Vista machines

For those of you who are into that type of thing, the Micropolis OLPC activity source includes the original(ish) C source of the game. Bil Simser says there’s some “pretty craptastic code”, but you also have to consider the time when it was written: everything had to fit into 640 KB of memory (probably less than .01% of what your computer has today!) and it had to be as fast as possible.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t run on Windows (yet), but the graphics are completely separated from the simulation (something that makes me happy as a software engineer), so it should be only a matter of time (in my estimation) before you can find Windows Micropolis, or Micropolis in lots of other interesting places. (via Slashdot)