You know that a game is nearing release when the publisher starts sending out press releases about how they’ve associated celebrities with their game, which is exactly the case with Will Wright’s 8-years-in-the-making universe sim Spore. EA has announced a new website where over 50 celebrities have posted their vision of the perfect biological being, all created in Spore’s Creature Creator of course. SporeVote.com presents brainchilds from the likes of musical genius Carlos Santana, actors David Arquette and Elijah Wood, model/actress Jaime King, retro Batman Adam West, known videogame media faces Brian Crecente and Geoff Keighley, billionare Richard Branson and even Will Wright himself, to name a few, all lined up for visitors to watch, judge and vote upon.

Once you’re done rating the “Sporelebrities”, EA also released a bunch of new screenshots and two new videos today — one a trailer for the Galactic Edition of the game, and the other showcasing the Civilization stage of the game — that need your attention.

The trailer of the Galactic Edition (above) — which is a collector’s edition with a fancier name — is probably the best way I’ve ever seen a collector’s edition showcased. Usually all we get is a spiritually dead press release with a photo or two attached, so this is a nice change and something I do hope we see more of.

In the video of the Civilization stage below, which is the fourth stage of five (Cell, Creature, Tribal, Civilization, Space), we have producer Kip Katsarelis and software engineer Soren Johnson, both of whom are big on destroying the opponent with crude military firepower by the way, explaining a few things about the stage and what the gameplay at that point in the game is all about.

If I was a betting man, I’d put my chips on the Space phase video being released in the coming days, seeing as Spore is now less than 3 days from its September 5 release in Europe and less than 5 days from the September 7 release in North America and all.