San Diego Comic-Con was this weekend and had some exciting news, but it was all eclipsed by the tragic death of one of gaming’s visionaries. 

Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata dies at 55. 

On Saturday, tragedy struck as Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata, a gaming visionary and icon, died of a bile duct tumor. Iwata had to miss last year’s Electronic Entertainment Expo, the biggest event in video gaming, because he was in poor health. 

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Iwata first began as a programmer for Nintendo’s HAL Laboratory in 1983, working on games such as “Earthbound” and “Ballon Fight.” In 2002, he became the fourth president of Nintendo. 

This is a big loss for the gaming community. Many executives in the industry only view games as a business and have no love for the games their companies create, but Iwata cared for the games his companies developed.

“On my business card, I am a corporate president. In my mind, I am a game developer. But in my heart, I am a gamer,” he said at the Game Developers Conference in 2005.

“Halo: The Fall of Reach” will be getting an animated adaptation.

“Halo: The Fall of Reach” was the first of many novels released for the franchise as part of its expanded lore. A prequel to the original game, “Halo: Combat Evolved,” the book is the origin story of the series’ Spartan protagonist, John-117, more well known as Master Chief. This book is a fan favorite among the novels in “Halo” fiction.

When the new game, ”Halo 5: Guardians,” launches Oct. 27, a three-part animated series based on the book will be included with limited and collector’s editions of the game.

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Voice cast for the upcoming “Call of Duty” Zombies mode announced.

Zombies is a mode popularized in the 2008 game “Call of Duty: World at War,” where players take the roles of a random assortment of characters as they defend themselves against hordes of zombies, with the mode becoming harder and harder as time goes on. 

Since then, we have seen a few different variations of the mode included in sequels. The newest game in the series, “Call of Duty: Black Ops III,” will include a new theme, weapons and characters.

At the San Diego Comic-Con Thursday, Heather Graham, Neal McDonough, Ron Perlman, Robert Picardo and Jeff Goldblum were announced as the voices of the playable characters.

“The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt” will be getting two sets of additional content, which combined is as long as the previous Witcher game, “The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings.”

“The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt” is an open-world action game launched in May. It was received extremely well and is the best game to come out this year so far, already selling more than four million copies. 

Many games receive downloadable content after they are released. Unfortunately, these are usually fairly small. However, some developers go the extra mile and give worthwhile additional experiences to their games.

The game’s developer, CD Projekt RED, is planning to release two separate sets of additional content, combined to be approximately 30 hours. According to the game’s director, Konrad Tomaszkiewicz, the content will be as large as their previous game, “The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings.”

Compared to the usual content additions, these two expansions are massive.

Eighteen minute gameplay trailer of “No Man’s Sky.”

The public was finally given an 18 minute gameplay demo of the highly anticipated “No Man’s Sky.” This first-person exploration game, developed by Hello Games, gives each player their own spaceship which can be used to travel between solar systems. Every planet in each solar system is unique and fully explorable. 

This demo was good because it was not a two or three minute supercut of the game you would see in trailers. This 18 minute demo really gave us a feel of how the game will truly play once it is available to the public.