When I first played Tropico, I was one happy camper. Finally having the ability to play a game as a corrupt dictator made me feel like the Rafael Trujillo of strategy games.  Tropico sees the player taking the role a "El Presidente," the ruler of an island in the Caribbean.  Basically, in the first Tropico, you're constructing and managing your island in the old fashion RTS kind of way in the 1950's.  As the president, the main goal of the game is to stay in power.  If your island's inhabitants hate they way you're running things, you're either going to have two things happen to you: 1) They're going to vote your sorry ass out of office, or 2) They will stage a coup d'etat and force-feed you gunshots.  I usually tried to avoid the second.

In Tropico 3, players return to the Spanish speaking island of Tropico during the era of the Cold War and take hold, once again, as the all-powerful "El Presidente."  You have the choice of turning your country into a luxurious vacation spot, a modern industrial nation, or a police state where, basically, your soldiers will probably go around randomly killing innocent civilians and father bastard children.  A release date has finally been announced for those of you itching to digitally wreck havoc on a third-world country.  The worldwide release for Tropico 3 for both PC and Xbox 360 is October 16th, 2009.  For the sake of unforeseen spitefulness against the Germans, Germany will be getting a release date for Tropico 3 on the PC for September 24th, 2009; and October 16th, 2009 for the Xbox 360.

The PC demo will be released the week of September 7th, 2009. "But what about the Xbox 360 demo?" No frakking clue.  However, we will make sure to find that out ASAP.