Many of you were heartbroken to discover that the Golden Sun III news floating around last week just might be less-than-real. Well, we hate to break it to you, but the creator has 'fessed up to fanning the flames of fan hopes everywhere. Vooks snagged an interview with the fellow behind the fake and asked the question we were all interested in as well: why? Was it a mean-spirited ploy to dash the hopes of Golden Sun fans? Not at all, says creator Opium. Instead, he hoped to foster discussion about the Golden Sun franchise and get people showing support for the property in the hopes that Camelot might take notice of just how desperate folks are for a new game. He also timed the fake's release carefully, hoping that with the E3 crush, it would get caught up as just another piece of news without people looking too far into whether or not the screens were real -- and it certainly seemed to work, as we saw Golden Sun III cropping up all over the place.

As for the how of the thing, Opium cooked up the shots using images from Golden Sun: The Lost Age in Photoshop, and with the aid of a friend, used ninja homebrew skills to get the images to display on his DS. The result was fairly convincing ... and if it happens to help prod developer Camelot into getting to work, then we'll have to be wary around trade shows, as other uber fans might just have to follow in Opium's Photoshopping footsteps.

[Thanks, Jordy C!]