Spice World is a 1998 music video game developed and published by Sony Computer Entertainment for the PlayStation. It was released by Sony subsidiary Psygnosis in North America.
Content
With tracks like "Wannabe", "Who Do You Think You Are", "Move Over", "Spice Up Your Life" and "Say You'll Be There", each animated Spice Girl will offer a few comments as the player tours the game's stages, experiencing a DJ and dance instructor that speak in stereotypical fashions. There are eleven dance moves applicable, each one a different combination of four buttons: six "basic" ones (the sway, shoulder shimmy, point and sway, knee wiggle, twirl, and shuffle) and five "special" moves (freestyle point, freestyle wave, hip wiggle, and side-jump). There is one button combination which triggers a backflip for Mel C and a walk and wave for the other Spice Girls. The game also contains a dozen interviews along with other entertaining moments, such as Geri Halliwell groping the buttocks of the then-Prince Charles, and the girls wreaking havoc on a Japanese talk-show.
In the game, players go through different stages to prepare the animated Spice Girls for a live television performance. The game starts out in the Mixing Room, where the player chooses the song the group will perform and the order each of its nine sections will be played. From the Mixing Room, the game then moves into Dance Practice, where the player gets to choreograph the dance routines for the group's performance by hitting button combinations as they appear on the screen.
The player then records the routines by programming each animated Spice Girl's dance steps one by one; routines recorded in one member of the group can also be copied to another member. When it is time for the show at the TV Studio, the player acts as the camera-person, choosing from eight different camera shots that can be moved in four directions; the player gets to watch the animated group sing and dance as the player has directed them to, with the camera shots selected by the player. This is followed by a 20-minute video footage of the actual Spice Girls being interviewed in the South of France. Throughout the game, the player is instructed by a disco king on what to do.
Up to 15 mixes, dance routines, and TV studio recordings can be saved on a single memory card.
Songs
Source:
- "Wannabe"
- "Say You'll Be There"
- "Who Do You Think You Are"
- "Spice Up Your Life"
- "Move Over"
- "If U Can't Dance" (featured in the intro and the Spice Network)
- "2 Become 1" (only in the Spice Network)
- "Naked" (only in the Spice Network)
Development
After seeing PaRappa the Rapper (1997) attract new types of users to the PlayStation market in Japan, Sony Computer Entertainment Europe thought they could do the same with the European market by creating and releasing a music video game; this inspired them to convince 19 Entertainment to produce a game featuring the girl group Spice Girls, a brand with enough leverage to be endorsed by Walker's Crisps, Pepsi and Asda. Spice World was developed by Sony Computer Entertainment Europe's internal team at Soho, using the same lighting engine as their previous game Porsche Challenge (1997).
The game was exhibited at the September 1997 European Computer Trade Show. Shortly before the game's release date in June 1998, Geri Halliwell left the Spice Girls which led to concerns by Sony that Spice World would have to be pulled or revised. The company was later given permission by Halliwell's lawyer to proceed with the game, two weeks before its scheduled release.
Reception
The video game was sold out in the United Kingdom within several months of its release. Unlike most Sony PlayStation games at the time which "were almost exclusively bought by men," Spice World was mostly purchased by "mothers and daughters". The game sold 75,000 copies.
Although a top-ten seller in the United Kingdom and garnering some reviews suggesting it would appeal to young fans of the Spice Girls, labeling it a non-gaming experience of only pressing buttons for a few minutes.