For those of you who eat, drink, and sleep Zelda, prepare for a double-whammy of sadness: Dampe (aka Richard Denton) is reported to have passed away this weekend in a fatal car accident. Dampe had been working on an unofficial 2D remake of the Ocarina of Time. The OoT2D website has been closed down by Dampe’s family, and the details of the accident as well as the project can be found in the forums for the game.

It should be noted that several users across the Web claiming to “know” Dampe suggest it’s likely he has e-faked his own death in order to get out of developing a game that had begun to lose his interest, not to mention the increasing amount of stress coming from the hype surrounding the title. It seems possible, considering the fact that when I was his age (15), I faked my death to get out of going to Chuck E. Cheese because seriously, those animatronic monsters are ka-ree-py.

Regardless, do you agree with his “family's” decision to terminate the project he had dedicated so much of his life to, or would finishing the game be the ultimate tribute to him?

[Update: Like Elvis and Tupac, Richard Denton is very much alive, as was reported this morning. Before you go getting all soggy-eyed over the next allegedly corpsified programmer, make sure you see a body first.

Just kidding about Tupac though, that bitch is dead.]