Despite looking pretty in screen shots, improving dramatically since it was first announced, work on Edge of Twilight is said to have ceased months ago by a former Fuzzyeyes developer. The Australian developer responsible is also said to have been effectively shut down.

We've reached out to publisher Southpeak Interactive and Fuzzyeyes Studios to verify this information and will update with any new details.

Update: A second source, also formerly of Fuzzyeyes Studios, offers similar information about the fate of Edge of Twilight and the game's developer.

He had spent the past year being treated for diabetes.

The first Comic-Con International was held in 1970 and was attended by 300 or so people. This past year Comic-Con was attended by 125,000 and has come to encompass more than comic books.

"Shel had notable foresight in not only believing these people needed some public acknowledgment," says David Glanzer, a Comic-Con spokesperson, "but that this truly was an American art form that Americans knew very little about."

Dorf has not been directly involved in running Comic-Con for the past couple of decades.

Comic-Con founder Shel Dorf dies at age 76 [Reuters] [Pic]

Punchatz who also illustrated for top-flight publications such as National Geographic, TIME and Playboy, suffered a heart attack on Oct. 11 and never regained consciousness. After two weeks of treatment and tests, doctors advised there was no hope of recovery, and Punchatz's family removed him from life support.

"He never wanted to be kept alive like this," Greg Punchatz, Don's son, said to SpectrumFantasticArt, "so we are respecting his wishes."

Punchatz's iconic Doom box was just a small piece of his overall portfolio of work, which brought acclaim from luminaries such as the author Ray Bradbury. Spectrum Fantastic Art reports that Punchatz had already cut his fee to help id Software meet its budget. Id counterproposed that Punchatz accept a percentage of Doom's profits instead, but Punchatz stuck with his fee. "So how was I to know this thing called Doom would make a jillion smackers?" he laughed later.

Don Ivan Punchatz (1936-2009) [Spectrum Fantastic Art via bit-tech.net]

SeeD's real name was Park Jeong Hoon, and he was born in 1981. Rest in peace, SeeD, you are missed.

esti_ [Twitter via Canned Dogs]

Beard's statement on the closure notes that "after fighting to keep the doors open for the past six months we have decided to close and move on," putting an end to the studio's seven year history. The studio was previously working on a reboot of Namco Bandai's Splatterhouse before having the project pulled, leading to a handful of curt exchanges between BottleRocket staffers and Namco execs.

When news of the Splatterhouse development debacle hit, it was rumored that BottleRocket's financial situation, stemming form the loss of the game, would mean imminent closure.

The studio was also rumored to have worked on a video game based on DC Comics' the Flash for Brash Entertainment before that publisher imploded.

Beard says in his e-mail that he is "now in the process of building a new development studio from the ground up" but did not expand upon those plans or whether BottleRocket staff would make the transition to that new studio.

On Baran's own 1Up page, he wrote this about himself:

I was an editor for EGM and the host of Sendai/Ziff-Davis magazines, enjoying a tenure that lasted from the days of the NES and continued all the way through to the Xbox. (1991-2001) I started out counseling players on a variety of videogame tip lines and ended my extensive career as Senior Editor...

On the magazines, I was once known as Cyber Boy. Historically speaking, I had one of the longest runs on the Review Crew-where I even held the top slot for a time. Sadly, this was mostly incognito as I wrote under Ed Semrad's name over the years. If you have your old issues, you can find plenty of hidden references in "his" reviews that would hint at the truth. Eventually I got to use my real name and had enjoyed the top slot of the Crew with my own identity.

A ZD buyout spun me into the fringes of EGM2 where I produced over 125 strategy guides. When the company was sold to an investment firm, I found myself cast out of the gaming media's light, but into the warm embrace of gaming retail instead.

Former EGM Editor In Chief Dan Hsu has a tribute to Baran over at BitMob. That in the embedded link below.

Rest in peace, Andy, rest in peace.

RIP: EGM's Andy Baran [BitMob]

After working at Toei, he moved on to become the Key Animator on a number of Studio Ghibli's biggest titles: Kiki's Delivery Service, My Neighbour Totoro, Porco Rosso, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind and Princess Mononoke.

He later went on to work for Square Enix as a layout artist on movie Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within and also was an animation director for Final Fantasy XI and did story boards for Final Fantasy IV on the DS.

The Spirits Within was a commercial failure; however, it was the first photorealistic 3D animated feature film. Critic Roger Ebert called the film a "technical milestone".

Kanda's style was exciting and he always found new ways to thrill audiences — making him of the most influential animators of his generation. He will be missed.

Kanada [AniPages Daily via Moon Chase]

He writes: "My expectation is that this is the final ES blog that I will write. I have enjoyed pulling it together for the past several years and sharing with you what I could about the inside workings of a game studio. It was a pleasure and a privilege to showcase the work and fun side of our group....

On behalf of everyone at ES, past and present, thanks for your support over the years. Your feedback on our games made the next version better. Buying legitimate copies made it possible for us to keep making them. Thanks also to those who wrote us to express regrets about the end of our studio and even the end of this blog."

Read the post in full in the link below.

Goodbye and Thanks [Ensemble Studios via GameFocus]

The Designers Republic founder Ian Anderson tells the Creative Review that the studio, which handled visual work on titles like WipEout and WipEout XL, laid off all staff earlier this week. A seemingly perfect storm of cash-related issues ended the company, but Anderson says it will rise again in another form.

The design firm also worked on a handful of other video game related projects, including the PC game Hardwar and the original Grand Theft Auto. But it was probably the WipEout series with which The Designers Republic was most closely tied as the earlier games' typography, team design and icons were largely the result of their work.

The Designers Republic Is Dead; Long Live The Designers Republic [CR Blog]

While billions across the planet were celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ yesterday, I instead spent the day mourning a death, as my little beige box uttered its last, gasping breath. What's most sad is not the loss itself; it's that it couldn't go out in glory, a fiery RROD flashing across its face like a middle finger extended from beyond the grave.

No, it just...died. Like an old man passing on in his sleep. I was playing some FIFA, the game froze, the screen corrupted and...that was it. No poetic statement, no RROD joke. It just...doesn't work now.

Seeing as my last 360 death was almost 18 months ago, I'd led myself to believe this kind of tragic unreliability was behind me. Guess not! First the Halo 3 beta, now with a stack of holiday purchases to get through...it sure does have a sick sense of timing.

Freeman's brother tells the Escapist that "personal issues," not the fury of SWG players were at the root cause of his decision to take his own life.

Jeff Freeman, Former SWG Lead Gameplay Designer, Dies [The Escapist]

Microsoft Drops HD DVD for Xbox 360 [AHN]

Gordon Brothers buys CompUSA, will close stores [Reuters]

While this substantial decline was inevitable, it is currently unclear whether the drop reflects consumer transition to next-gen software or weak spending patterns amongst the low-end consumer...we think that the PS2 may finally be on its way out of the industry for good.

While the PS2 has most definitely peaked, a holiday price drop could spurn a renewed interest in the already inexpensive console. Plus, the 40GB PS3 will leave a backwards compatibility gap for gamers...and just think about how long the PSOne held on after the PS2 proved to be successful. Oooh! But then again, maybe the lack of PS3 backward-compatibility will hurt the software sales even if the hardware does better. Isn't all this speculation so much fun?

But yes, with the aggressive price cuts of Sony's high end and Microsoft's only current offerings, few kids will be asking for a PS2 this Christmas.

PS2 On its Way Out for Good [gamedaily]

Our hearts go out to Colin's wife, daughter and the rest of his family and friends.

Rally champion Colin McRae dies with son in helicopter crash [Times Online]
[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Joel is an inconsolable mess right now. He only had the energy to IM me about Sierra's announcement today before curling back up into a fetus position.

Starting August 16, Sierra Entertainment will be pulling the plug on mulitplayer support for 20 of the developer's older games. The list... yes, Starsiege: Tribes is on the list:

3-D Ultra Cool Pool
ARC (Attack Retrieve Capture)
Lords of Magic™
NASCAR® Legends
NASCAR® Racing 2002 Season
NASCAR® Racing 2003 Season
NASCAR® Racing 3
NASCAR® Racing 3 demo
NASCAR® Racing 3 Trucks
NASCAR® Racing 4
Professional Bull Rider 2
PGA Championship Golf 2000™
Starsiege: Tribes
SWAT® 3 demo
Throne of Darkness™
Field & Stream Trophy Bass 4
Field & Stream Trophy Bass 5
Field & Stream Trophy Hunting 4
Field & Stream Trophy Hunting 5
You Don't Know Jack®: 5th Dementia

Notice of Multiplayer Fuctionality Termination for 20 Sierra Entertainment Heritage Titles [Sierra]

NOTICE: Today NCsoft is announcing that it will be closing down service for Auto Assault at the end of the summer. The service will close at midnight on August 31, 2007. As of today, any player currently in the service with an active billed account will not be billed again. If players have previously purchased time via multi-month billing or time cards that extends their service past July 31, NCsoft will reconcile these accounts appropriately. There will be more announcements coming soon regarding the shut down of Auto Assault and its impact on current accounts. Please check back at www.autoassault.com for more information.

The thing is while Auto Assault never managed to totally hook me, it did enough things differently that it was worth a gamer's attention. I suspect it was this innovation that probably kept the game from succeeding. Don't get me wrong, it had some significant issues, but the real problem lay, I think, in the fact that it was a bit too different from all of the other mainstream MMOs out there.

I sort of suspected this was coming. When I was at the NetDevil Anniversary in June several of the developers referred to Auto Assault in the past tense, one even said that they never wanted to spend that much of their life working on something only to see it fail. I was sort of shocked at the time to hear a developer talking about their still running game as a failure, but it makes a lot more sense now.

What I hope happens is that other developers, and certainly NetDevil, do a post-postmortem on the game and try to figure out why it failed. I suspect top on the list will be the overly complex crafting system and the high-end PC requirements.
Important Notice [Auto Assault]

Ah, the irony. Even though Sega might have finally disowned the Dreamcast, that doesn't mean Akihabara retailers have. Shop MESSE SANOH has set up a demo unit for Last Hope, which was released in February of this year. Not officially endorsed by Sega, the game is a bullet hell shooter in the R-TYPE-y and Gradius-y vain. What's more, it's a port of the super rare Neo Geo version of which only sixty copies were produced. Other DC titles released this year, KAROUS and Trigger Heart - Exelica, have met with brisk sales at MESSE SANOH. So, Dreamcast just because Sega can give you up, doesn't mean we can! Brian Ashcraft

Dreamcast Demo [Akiba Blog]

Richard (aka Dampe) creator of the long awaited fan-made 2D Ocarina of Time, died Friday in tragic car accident. Tales of the game had been floating around the internet for a long time and many people were looking forward to trying out his handywork. His goal was to create a faithful recreation of Ocarina of Time in an olde school 2D Zelda style. An official website and forums were posted so that Dampe and his fans could discuss the details ongoing project.

Dampe's official site has been taken down at the request of his family, but you can still read the touching memorials left to him from his many fans on the forums.

Rest in peace, Dampe. Your hard work and dedication to the game world will be missed.

Update: I regret to say that I posted the wrong name with this article earlier. Changes have been made to correct the mistake. Thanks.