Over at Joystiq, Kevin Kelly wonders if Will Wright’s infamous, never-quite-released game Spore (in progress since 2000) was inspired by the 1980 board game Quirks.

Spore is a massive online game where players evolve a group of single celled animals through various phases until they end the game by taking over the universe. Quirks is an evolution game of adapting single cell animals so they can thrive in a hostile and ever-changing environment.

But Quirks isn’t the only game about evolution and adaptation. Evo, Primordial Soup, Trias, and dozens of other come readily to mind. And Spore is surely more reminiscent of civilization building or “god” games, such as Civilization or The Sims.

I’m guessing that Quirks was simply the first evolutionary / adaptation game that Kevin saw, and he put two and five together.