Alhambra
Latest
Psystar is dead. Long live Quo Computer
While we all know the story of Psystar, the company that crashed and burned by loudly selling non-Apple Macintosh computers with OS X installed, a much quieter and more polite company named Quo Computer seems to be doing just fine. Their mission is to get computers that can run the Macintosh OS into as many hands as possible, and they go about it in a much more reasonable way. Although their PR waxes eloquently about the virtues of using a Mac, Quo creates computers that can run any operating system, be it Linux, Windows, Mac OS X, or any combination of the three. In June of last year, they opened up a store located at 2401 West Main Street, Alhambra, California as a small mom and pop operation in a section of town that is going through revitalization. At the store, they offer classes including one on how to switch from a PC to a Mac. Their site speaks of getting free computers to low-income neighborhoods and offers to train teachers and work with them in order to get computers into more classrooms. They seem like nice people and not as litigious as some other company we know.
Gallery Nucleus' Art of Blizzard show
Penny Arcade made mention of this in a recent news post: Gallery Nucleus in the town of Alhambra, California, will host a showing of artwork from the talented artists of Blizzard, this Saturday, March 8th, from 7 to 11 PM. It's not known exactly how many pieces of concept artwork will be shown, but it gets better: each piece shown is purchasable, with the evening's proceeds to benefit Child's Play, the wonderful organization we posted about before. You'll also get a chance to speak with the devs and artists of Blizzard and maybe get a little insight into how they work their magic.But wait, there's more! The evening will also see live demos of the World of Warcraft trading card game at Nucleus' new gallery space one block over. You can read the event information on this downloadable PDF. Gorgeous galleries, fascinating conversation, and absorbing gameplay -- what more could you ask for? That's easy: someone make this a traveling show!
Rumor: Puerto Rico coming to XBLA
It looks like board game lovers are going to be getting even more Euro gaming goodness. At least, that's what the signs are pointing to. We already know that Xbox Live Arcade will be getting games like Settlers of Catan, Alhambra, and our personal favorite Carcassonne, but according to some rumors at GameStooge it looks like another Rio Grande Games classic will be coming down the pipeline ... Puerto Rico.Apparently in the threads over at BoardGameGeek.com (which is a fantastic site for board games and such, along with the equally as fantastic FunAgain.com) the German gaming site BrettSpielWelt has taken down their online version of Puerto Rico, and replaced it with a message that another company has purchased the rights for "online exploitation." And c'mon, no one is better at exploiting things than Microsoft, right?Puerto Rico is a fun game that takes about an hour to play, and is all about shipping goods and building cities. It's been critically hailed as one of the best games of the past twenty years, already has a PC version out, and it's continually voted the number one game at board game sites, and it sure would be nice to see it on XBLA.
Xbox Live Aracade to get Settlers of Catan & other Euro board games
Microsoft has announced plans to port European tabletop favorites like The Settlers of Catan, Carcassonne and Alhambra to Xbox Live Arcade. Price details and release dates have not been revealed, but the Catan port is likely to appear first as MSN Games has been hosting an online version of the German board game for nearly two years.
