Will Wright's latest game Spore may not have been the be all and end all of PC games but it's character creator tools and its animation features that make those creations move with no pre-generated movements is certainly a huge accomplishment.

That's likely the reason why the game was given a Jim Henson Honors award this week. What? The late and beloved creator of the Muppets has his own awards? Well, sort of. The Jim Henson Company launched their awards in 2005 to, in their words, honor "organizations, individuals or products that reflect the core values and philosophy of the legendary Jim Henson and the company he founded."

For the 2008 edition, the technology category award was given to Spore. In giving out the honor the Jim Henson Company stated, "The game is meticulously conceived and executed with infinite detail, allowing a gamer to design and create his own character – a digital alter ego - providing for an unprecedented level of user creativity as his being evolves from a single-cell organism to a galactic god over hundreds of millions of years." It also might not have hurt that a lot ot the creatures created in the game happen to look like Muppets but we could be wrong.