John Romero, co-developer of ultra-violent shoot-'em-ups Doom and Quake, was the subject of widespread panic among the PC gaming community when news leaked out that he had been shot dead. The co-founder of games developer Ion Storm was pictured on a pathologist's slab, apparently the victim of a bullet wound to the head. Two Ion Storm staffers were reported to have confirmed the news, broken on a game news Web site. However, suspicions arose when Dallas police were unable to find any record of the developer's demise, but it emerged another John Romero had met with a grizzly end. Romero himself finally broke silence on the Ion Storm Web site, and admitted he was partly to blame for the wild speculation concerning his fate. "Maybe I shouldn't have taken that morbid picture for Texas Monthly magazine," he confessed -- the photo was originally snapped for a feature on Romero's company.®