While attending the University of Arizona in Tucson in the early 90s, I got very confused by posts on Usenet talking about buying computers at Fry’s. You see, the Fry’s grocery store chain still existed in Tucson at the time, so I could not figure out where a grocery store would stock computers!
Needless to say when I moved to the Bay Area after college graduation, I wasted no time visiting the closest Fry’s Electronics. For me, that was the original Fremont location - the one in an office park off Mission Blvd with the space theme inside. I never see that location mentioned any more. It was closed after Fry’s bought the Incredible Universe stores and they moved the Fremont Fry’s to the IU store on Auto Mall Parkway.
I was confused when I moved out to Phoenix especially because the logos are pretty similar. Turns out Fry's electronics was started by the sons of the founder of Fry's food.
Wow, I had no idea Phil Eklund was such a superstar! I met him waaaay back in 1990 when he still lived in Tucson and would bring his whacky home made games to the “Historical Games Society” club at the U of A. Way to go Phil!
I know Phil Eklund primarily from hard-core science simulations such as High Frontier and Biosgenesis. I do know him, but I wouldn't rank him among game design superstars such as Uwe Rosenberg or Reiner Knizia. His games are not exactly mainstream.
Speaking of which, this article suggests that boardgames are niche, but games like Siedler von Catan, Agricola, or the many, many games by Reiner Knizia, are absolutely mainstream. At least in Europe. I spent 1997 giving everybody Siedler von Catan for their birthday (and later the Dutch translation), so I would hope everybody vaguely interested in boardgames has it by now.
This does kind of happen. I have a friend who used to drag us to play Camelot in some strange bar. Fast forward 10 years, he translated or edited most of titles I play these days. As in, his name in credits of every other box.
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