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Unfortunately for our Latin American brethren, the sub-Amazonian games industry has always been a bit mystical and nefarious. Prices are exorbitant, piracy is rampant, and, for better or worse,the black market seems to be thriving. Some of the more interesting aspects of the Latin games industry, however, are its clones. Tectoyis a Brazilian company that licenses Sega games for itsperennialGenesis, Mastery System and Mega Drive clones. They also happen to be Sega’s official Brazilian distributor, responsible for the Brazilian Saturn and Dreamcast campaigns....

The Nintendo Financial Results briefing notes say that a 3D Classics version ofExciteBikewill come as a free download in a May 3DS firmware update. Nice! I love that game, I love free things, and I love the idea of my 3DS doing more. Nintendo says that this freebie is part of their effort to give users promotional activites to urge them to go online with the 3DS. Speaking of downloadable things for my 3DS, Nintendo is saying that they’d like to add more content past Gameboy titles to the 3DS’ Virtual Console....

So… how ’bout thatBattlefield 3Beta? It’s been out for a little over a week now; what’s your verdict? If you said, “Pretty fun, but pretty glitchy!” you’d be right on track with how I’ve felt about it so far. I haven’t managed to play much, but what I have played has been fast, fun and frantic, but alsofall-through-the-floor funny. Just keep telling yourself it’s a beta and you’ll get through it....

Today, GarageGames has revealed their new first-person shooter,Fallen Empire: Legions. A quick glance at the screenshots in the gallery certainly won’t blow your mind; it certainly looks to be an average (and generic looking) first-person shooter. But there’s a catch — the game will be delivered through a web browser, through a new platform found atInstantAction.com. “Legions won’t be just any ordinary jewel matching web game,” saysFallen Empire: Legions‘ project direction, Tim Aste....

Garry’s Mod has done many wonders for the Internet. Never did I imagine someone would make a full blownPokemonspoof with Garry’s Mod though. But that’s just what we have here in the first episode of “Garrymon” byYouTuber SpawnThemAll. This debut episode reflects the first episode of thePokemonanimated series, but withHalf-Lifeelements thrown in. You might not be ready for what you’re about to watch.

A panel at yesterday’s inaugural Games Beat event derailed into interesting territory, a realm which the announcement ofOnLivelater in the evening drew into sharp relief. While the plan initially was to discuss the coming struggle between small studios and industry giants, Silicon Knights’ Dennis Dyack quickly took the conversation in the direction of one of his latest passions:cloud computing. This lead Lars Butler ofTrion World Networkto comment that the manner in which the games industry is currently planning to harness the power of cloud computing (see: OnLive) is misguided....

News flash: there are bugs inBorderlands. People rocking the RPS have undoubtedly observed two or three. But while most of the issues don’t lay waste to the experience, this latest spotted by1UPcertainly does: players are losing all of their character stats — weapon and action skills — upon quitting out of joint games on all three platforms. People reporting this nasty issue on theGearbox official forumshave received an answer instead of complete silence....

It is no secret that I am a very big fan ofAssassin’s Creed,and you can imagine my excitement when we saw all new gameplay forRevelationsat gamescom. I was even more excited when we saw gameplay of Altair! In between jumping up and down with excitement, I manage to ask about the new gameplay elements (such as bomb crafting), how gamers end up playing as Altair, and what the hell is going on with Desmond?...

Refresh.Refresh. Refresh again. For some reason we were all anxiously waiting for that Google+ games tab to appear in our accounts this morning in the Destructoid office. When it finally did appear for me I was a bit excited, but most of that excitement has since worn off. I don’t know what I expected, but what I got was something that is a lot like Facebook gaming. If you get nothing else from this, at least get that you shouldn’t put too much toward looking forward to that gaming tab appearing in your Google+ account....

Now here is a very interesting development from theSmashDOJO. A new item calledAssist Trophieswill allow you to summon random Nintendo characters onto the battlefield. From the screens released so far, Hammer Bro,NintendogsandSamuraiGoroare the first “items” announced. Just like thePokemons, the Assist characters will be invincible. From the sounds of it, there are going to be a lot of Assist characters: Assist Trophies allow you to enjoy even more characters whocouldn’t quite make it as playable fighters....

(Note: I have no idea how a train actually functions.) Mantel Global Industriesis the website that plays home to the viral ad campaign Ubi has set up, and while it isn’t nearly as fascinating as ilovebees, the story of corporate greed run amok is so utterly original that it provides almost limitless possibilities for story telling and player engagement both in the viral arena and in the game itself. Sadly, some of the links seem to be broken, most notably, the main one onthis page, that should take you to a video — the same video that appears at the top of this post....

Hoo boy, slow news day today, huh? On a dull and lifeless Sunday such as this, what better way can we spend our overly abundant sabbath time than by laughing at the expense of that pudstick, Jack Thompson? HMV have the right idea, as this triumphant exclusive box art for Rockstar’sManhunt 2shows. Perhaps it could be a replacement for those “editor’s choice” logos that get plastered on game cases? “This game is 100% disapproved by Jack Thompson....

The Japanese version ofHomehas an extra area called the Café. It may not have food or hardbody chicks serving drinks, but it does have personality. It’s a tranquil environment, compared to the audio visual assault that is the Theatre or Mall. Sony is bringing the area to the US version ofHome, but they need help first. Think tanks realized that “Cafe” is a bland name for an environment. To alleviate that issue, they have asked members to rename the space in acontest forum thread....