Irvine, Calif.-based Death Jr. house Foundation 9 has officially announced Double Helix, a newly-named development entity from the merged studios Shiny Entertainment and The Collective.

Multi-studio developer Foundation 9 announced in October 2007 that it wold be merging Shiny and the The Collective, but had yet to name the new entity.

The announcement of Double Helix means that the Shiny label, famous for the classics Earthworm Jim and MDK, is no more.

For a few years now, Shiny existed in name only. Industry vet David Perry founded Shiny in 1993, before the studio was acquired by Infogrames (later known in North America as Atari) in 2002. Struggling Atari sold Shiny to Foundation 9 in 2006, with Perry leaving months earlier.

The Collective is best known for Marc Ecko's Getting Up: Contents Under Pressure.

But now Foundation 9 is starting fresh. The former Shiny and The Collective studios will be combining their respective teams, proprietary technologies and best practices.

Studio head Michael Saxs Persson, a 10-year Shiny vet, explained the reasoning behind the name Double Helix. "Making games is in our DNA," he said in a statement. "The Double Helix name is perfect for our studio because it invokes the thought of two studios coming together to build a powerful new force in game development."

The new logo, pictured, was chosen from an array of employee submissions. Persson said that the move to have employees design the logo was part of instilling a sense of ownership in Double Helix employees.

The studio is currently working on three "large-scale, multi-platform licensed games."