Last week, the Brazilian Sega licensee released another iteration of the 8-bit platform they insist in keeping alive. It’s called the Master System 3 (not to be confused with the classic Master System III). The new console has a “modern” design remarkably similar to the 1990′s Mega Drive, and comes with 131 built-in, G-rated games. Opinions on the local blogs have been a bit harsh, criticizing the lack of a cartridge slot and steep price tag (about 133USD, or half a Playstation 2 in the gray market).



The Master System III comes with a pair of Mega Drive-ish six-button controllers — I’m not sure what for: as far as I know the only SGM game to use more than two buttons was Tectoy’s own Street Fighter II port, which is not included in the list (probably due to licensing issues). Somewhat amusingly, SGM3 also features composite video output — old hardware dressed for a new world.

It has always been easy to find not-so-honest famiclones masquerading as other consoles around here — to this day the famed Polystation tricks customers at most small import stores. Now gamereporter.org is reporting on a recent crop of Wii lookalikes:

Wii Vision is a black Wii copycat with wireless controls. Amazingly, it comes from local maker Dynacom, a more-or-less respected company which any Brazilian knows for their Dynavision famiclone – the guys have balls! Just like the Polystation, the Wii Vision has a NES slot that’ll surely disappoint the kids of gullible parents who buy this to play Wii games. Comes with (allegedly) 111 in-memory games, an extra cart with more 106 games, and a light gun.

Now the Chinese Multigame Multilaser, by contrast, actually includes six infrared games with special-purpose controllers, including a soccer shoe! It’s supposed to be 16-bit, and a second cart adds 16 conventional games — no word if they’re original or if this is an SNES-compatible. If I can put my hands on one of those I’ll report more.

The price is around R$279 ($165) for Wii Vision and R$349 ($207) for Multigame; of course, much cheaper than the R$1000 the Wii is going for in the gray market. Thanks to Wendel for the tip.

A bit of old news, but I haven

Bashō

Dwango, the company behind Tales of Eternia Online, is making a new Shiren the Wanderer mobile game which will allow people to watch while you play (spectator mode). I guess they