Mattel Aquarius Test Drive & Legacy - Trash to Treasure Part 3

[@RMCRetro]

Thanks to everyone for watching this series. So what do we all think.... was the Aquarius worth saving or is it an absolute stinker? Let me know your thoughts. Neil - RMC

[@JesusisJesus]

I think you summed it up perfectly at 6:13 - I would've had more fun with a potato.

[@d2factotum]

I think criticising it for looking like 1978 is a bit far. It was definitely a couple of years too late to market for its specs, but if you think about it, it's a lot better than a ZX81 and roughly on par with a VIC-20. If it had come out in 1981 at a similar price point to its 1983 price it might have earned some success.

[@srfrg9707]

RetroManCave We, Greeks, don't throw plates to each other any more than other nations do... We break plates in some bouzouki clubs though but never on people.

[@rickylovesyou]

Nay. An absolute stinker. 😷

[@p166mx]

Aa true stinker but also well worth saving :)

[@andreweastland9634]

For all it's limitations the Aquarious had one massive advantage, it's price. Yes as a teenager I would have loved a zx81 and drooled over the c64 but the only one I could actually afford was the Aquarious and so started a lifetime career in computing. It's easy to deride it from today but at the time it was a real computer at an affordable price.

[@haraldhimmel5687]

It makes me happy that some people in the comments actually made use of this machine.

[@LorenzBaermann]

Same story for me!

[@nacnud_]

hashtag metoo. Well, I was bought it, as an 8 year old. Programming ever since.

[@mesterak]

I made a text adventure game on the Aquarius, which was my first ever program I authored. That’s about all I got out of my Aquarius beyond playing a couple games. I moved on from there to get a Coleco Adam and a C64. I had several years of learning and gaming on those systems. If you can get your hands on a Coleco Adam, that would be a great video to watch. I used to modify cassette tapes to work it and had great luck copying games and creating a couple of my own. I would buy and trade games in a user group. I have fond memories of a guy who lived out in California who sent me tons of tapes for my Adam. I would later become a senior software engineer, and I’d say I owe it to my humble beginnings with the Aquarius and Adam. Thanks for taking me back and reminding me of where I started 😀

[@Ikrananka]

+1 for a Coleco ADAM series.

[@MattPilz]

Since it has a Z80 chip and supports assembly/machine language, plus the micro-expander which includes the AY-3-8910 sound chip (adds 3 more voices + the internal beep) and expanded RAM it has some potential. People have made demo-like text scrollers, flicker image viewers that quickly alternate between two frames to fake a much more wide-range of colors and fidelity, and even made basic side scroller game-type demos. Its major limitation is still the fixed character set. You only have 256 preset charter glyphs to plot on the screen (40x24) or at best 80x72 using bloxels. Doing any of this in BASIC is painfully slow, though.

[@edgeeffect]

"I wonder what a Sister Sledge game would look like?"... You know the answer to that... it would look like Ralph, the running man! I always used to say in the 1980s "Games players only know how to type 'run'... they don't know how to type 'list'."

[@portnaluinge]

As someone who lived through this era, I've always admired the industrial design of the Aquarius. Nothing else admittedly, but it does at least make an attractive ornament.

[@k001daddy]

I may have said this before, but I remember always hearing about the Aquarius, along with the Coleco Adam, but never actually saw one in person. I love this series because I can now put a computer to the name.

[@Dorelaxen]

I picked up an Aquarius with the memory expansion and 2 cartridge games a couple of years ago for almost nothing (like 15 bucks if I remember right) at a flea market. It had everything, all the overlays and whatnot. Treasures of Tarmin is actually an excellent game, and I spent quite a bit of time on it. May not be the greatest computer ever, but it's a nice little piece of computing history.

[@AWalYT]

Tape archaeology is crazy sometimes. Last no label tape I ran through my tape recorder ended up being a dub of a Blue Öyster Cult album. 😄

[@nigelbarrett4936]

That letter complaining about the non-working magazine listings rang a bell - I used to find in general that magazine or book listings failed to work, but when I found errors in one of my own programs published in "the micro user" I asked what was going on. Turns out they used to reformat the column widths by hand, and the typesetters weren't coders so that often led to problems creeping in. It also explains why some magazines were worse than others!

[@JohnnyWednesday]

I've really enjoyed this Aquarius series - great pacing and writing - goes lovely with a cup of tea :)

[@harunal-muhajir5555]

A video on the Coleco Adam would be amazing.

[@discovermetaldetecting]

Fantastic three part series Neil. I remember as a kid seeing the Aquarius amongst the line up of other machines in the computer section of my local supermarket! It goes to show how precarious and fast moving the market was back then. I can’t imagine how money was lost on machines that flopped. A really interesting look back in time! 👍🏻

[@sammy169169169]

I had one of those with every accessory...tape recorder, RAM cartridge, mini expansion module with game controllers, printer, and one you didn't mention and the best one available...a modem! This was my first experience with getting online. It came with Compuserve which, at the time, wasn't much more than a glorified BBS service. None-the-less, it was quite the experience! Other than that, I also loved the AD&D cartridge and wrote a couple of programs. I wrote one generating lottery numbers for my parents to use and one that simulated the scanner from KITT with sound. The printer worked well enough too. It wasn't the Apple II I asked for, but enough to keep me interested in computers...enough to make a career from!

[@MattPilz]

In this set you have at least one book ("30 Dynamic Games for Aquarius") and a newsletter ("Aquarius User: Issue 2") that have never been digitized. Would be awesome some day to see these archived and available to Aquarius enthusiasts they seem impossible to come by except by those who already own them.

[@jameshenderson4089]

These videos we’re great. I was thinking about picking up an Aquarius but after seeing your videos I think I will live vicariously through you.

[@pitmatix1457]

14:15 Derek Findas reading a letter makes repairing the Mattel Aquarius all worthwhile. Derek vs Kim is the letters page matchup we never knew we needed.

[@thebiggerbyte5991]

Absolutely. Although pretty much stillborn and outclassed by its contemporaries, I still have some fond memories of mine, and I regret selling. I will get one one day, with all the trimmings, just because.

[@ag3ntorange164]

I think every retro computer has it's charms. And you did well to restore and preserve it. Great job and worth it!

[@TOMORROWSPHERE]

Great Aquarius series! I had a Magnavox Odyssey 2 in 1979. The membrane keyboard was terrible on it, but being console/lite computer I have a fondness for these odd toy/computers. Typing in endless lines of code to get a tree icon to beep and move...those where the days!

[@GadgetUK164]

Drawing or painting with a Potato - LOL! Good point! Nice to see this system, never seen or heard of it until this particular series.

[@esshahn]

Truly the most talented retro channel. Enjoyable as always, thank you.

[@mdijkens]

Actually... it became a very good deal in The Netherlands once they were discontinued. My parents bought one as a gift for a family in Hungary to get their first experience with computers and simple programming They bought one with 16K pack for much less then the next-cheapest one Before they send it of to hungary I had my first experience on this one for a couple of weeks and really loved it. I had no experiences to compare it with and was really impressed having a television do what I programmed :-)

[@robwebnoid5763]

I remember dinking around with the floor demo model of the Aquarius at a department store here in the US. The store was probably K-Mart & it was mostly obviously in 1983. The start up screen was indeed blue, so it reminded me of the C64. I played with it for a few minutes & that was pretty much all the experience I had of the machine. There was some inkling in me of wanting it, but eventually did not, as I was still a teen & didn't really have my own money. I ended up with a C-64 & to this day I still have a C-64 (well 3 of them) & still am a Commodore fan to this day. Cheapness usually does not win out when it comes to computers. It is more about innovation, quality & future expansion that stands out, making it long lasting & popular. It is unfortunate that companies such as Mattel had to rely on the cheapness philosophy in order to try to gain some foothold in a industry sector such as microcomputers. They really should have focused on their Intellivision expansion further in the years prior if they wanted to make money, which is really the bottomline here.

[@CRG]

Cool machine. Reminds me of my sharp mz700 which only has a character set to play with. It too was early 80s and really struggles to keep up with the likes of the c64.

[@mariogunasekera5043]

The first home computer I had was an Aquarius 2 with extended basic. It didn’t not have the 16k cartridges you mentioned in the box. Maybe the units sold in Sri Lanka didn’t have it. I had a game called “Night Stalker” on it which came in a cartridge. I loved that game. Probably the only good game this computer had. Also the lack of games meant I wrote my own. I wrote a version of “Blitz” which is a game I saw running on a VIC20. I wrote that in BASIC. I have the Aquarius to thank for my current career in computers as having to write my own games taught me to program.

[@ThePCPitChannel]

Wow, with those tapes having mainly music on, it's a real time capsule!

[@sonic2000gr]

The data recorder has very nice sound quality. It is well suitable for audio too.

[@derekwhidden9730]

This short series certainly has satisfied my curiosity for the Aquarius. I remember in the late 80s seeing one in a box at a thrift store. I never heard about it prior and already oened a CoCo2 systrm complete with disk drives and printer. Not only that, I had recently purchased a Coleco Adam from the same thrift store. Just looking at the Aquarius and comparing this in my mind had me thinking it was something of a knockoff of the Timex Sinclar, except I saw the Mattel logo on there. Back in those days we did not have the cheap learning computers by V Tech. I had always remembered it though and remained curious. It obviously was not as capable as my CoCo, and not as functional as an Adam. Mine worked but I could never seem to get it going into basic mode. Now looking at them on ebay, it seems easy enough to find one but the costs are prohibitive. You can get a far more capable computer, for less, snd I am not even going to talk about a Rasberry Pi. I have seen people on ebay asking between $200-300 USD. I bought my Atari ST for $130. The prices are all relative, and I am sure if I waited long enough... But it is as you say, a footnote. It is something to display if you have a museum.

[@holleholl3057]

Well, as a kind of silver lining for this system you can use the tape recorder to play music from Men At Work & Co ;) Seriously, the Aquarius had at least some colours more than the ZX 1. I could imagine that some Mattel Managers saw the Commodore Advertise for the VIC 20 (ft. "Captain Kirk" Will Shatner) and started thinking "Well, we can build such a thing as well, isn´t there that Atari Game Console which used to be a success ? " Well, the machine and its hardware looks at least awesome ! Great refurbishing job, Neil ;)

[@IntyMichael]

The Mattel Aquarius was as PAL version only in the UK (and maybe Australia) available. In other Countries it got released by Radofin after Mattel closed down. The Radofin version of the Hard- and Software had international boxes and instructions. And it was at least until 1985 on the market. And in the tradition that (almost) all tape games were released by a British company, the first new game on tape for the Aquarius since the 80s is from there too. Aquariworm by Cronosoft was just released about a month ago.

[@cheaterman49]

Neil, these lines, they're too sharp as I already said hahaha, glad you made a special mention of Advanced D&D again! The door opening animation too, silky smooth, some people really made the limited character set work! We can barely see the pixels on the diagonal walls so I was still wondering if they used vector rendering internally, but seeing the big red dot with sharp pixels makes me think the pixels are just to small (and KZbin compression too brutal) to see them very well from the distance. Great video so far :-) lemme keep watching! EDIT: The blocky aesthetic is very cute in that shooter game IMHO, at least it's very honest about what the machine can do haha! Thanks for the great video!

[@GaryAudley]

Another great video thanks for the awesome content 👍

[@RMCRetro]

Thanks Gary 🤘

[@CatWeazle21]

Fascinating, thanks RMC! An interesting system, that missed the boat. Technology moved so fast at that time - 3 years earlier it would have been up against the ZX81 & VIC20, and perhaps stood a better chance. LOL at the genuine 80's mixtapes, quite a decent selection!

[@RichardTroupe]

It may be a limited computer with little appeal but why do I still want one? Haha!

[@electronash]

"Potato print." lol In fairness, that does describe the graphics of some retro machines quite well.

[@electronash]

#blocksels

[@electronash]

That bit of "digital archeology" reminded me a lot of when I loaded up a random unlabelled Speccy tape in the early 90s, only to hear this... kzbin.info/www/bejne/mGbWkICJpsqKrZI Loving that mildly enthusiastic "Heyyyyyy" at the end. lol

[@B3tanTyronne]

Surprise Derek and Kim cameos are always welcome and it is a shame that there never was a Sister Sledge game that had the aquarius running man attempting to collect musical notes as he was lost in music.

[@CubicleNate]

In describing the graphics, this was the best line Ever, "... the difference between using an artist's fine paintbrush and perhaps, drawing or painting with a potato... "

[@Colin_Ames]

I have enjoyed this series. I think the machine's only redeeming feature is its looks. I like the design.

[@aqualung2000]

I had to comment, just to give a +1 for Sister Sledge. I completely agree, if computers could read Sister Sledge data what a wonderful world we would live in!

[@bazza5699]

Great series this Neil, brilliant restoration job too. Congrats. A lot of those old machines look similar but there is something in the Aquarius design that reminds me more of a child's toy. Not that the Spectrum looked professional, or even that there was a standard look for home micros back then (in many ways that was the beauty of the scene). I do feel this machine seemed more fitting for an under 8 year old user than for a 8 bit user though. The Aquarius lives on through the MISTer project as a featured core. I haven't had a chance to play around with it yet, but i am looking forward to loading AD&D :)

[@Johanniscool]

That potato print analogy was genius

[@SomePeopleCallMeWulfman]

I have a soft spot for the Aquarius. Back in the day, I wouldn't have touched it with a 10-foot pole, though...

[@weightlessliving9856]

Really enjoyed this series. Just realized on the third episode that I’ve watched it two years late! Yes, I think it deserved your refurbish. Actually, I’d really like to see some of the other available software. Perhaps you could put out a call for some cartridge and tape donations and do a new episode 4 in the series. 😃

[@Breakfast_and_Bullets]

They wrote over "Down Under" with bad code?! Heresy!

[@wizpin]

What this made clear for me, is that I really miss audio cassettes, I'll order some one eBay now :)

[@boulderdashc6425]

Thanks for the video. I have always been interested in this computer since finding out about it, and now know more from watching. :-)

[@greymack]

My mate had one, his mum bought him it through Littlewoods club book (remember them) he didn't have it too long though and we all ended up with C64s

[@borkmcfink]

I had an Aquarius when I was a kid, thought I was the only one. The games weren't available to buy anywhere, I remember spending ages slavishly typing them out from that book and hardly any of them worked. Those were the days.

[@niallmartin590]

Dude, when you name your videos can you please stick to a certain prefix before which part, trying to watch them in order can be a pain.. otherwise always glad to see new stuff on your channel thanks :)

[@stephenelliott7071]

I was wondering how this particular Trash to Treasure had gone, the Trash to Treasure is my favourite part of the show. Whenever I visited my local Tandy Shop back in the day there always seemed to be a new computer to peer at. Having already received a ZX Spectrum for Christmas I wasn't interested, but thought it looked very nice with it's blue keys and matching tape drive; I had the off-the-shelf WH Smiths Tape Drive for the Speccy...Character graphics, oh dear. As for the games, that's clearly a Jumping Jack rip-off on the Speccy (but without any enemies). But Pac Mr? Haha, cool name. And these days I'm reminded of the dancing scene 'Age of Aquarius' from a certain Steve Carell film.

[@millenniumtree]

The anxiously awaited conclusion! Thanks for exploring this weird and unfortunate system!

[@Qyngali]

Ever since I saw the first episode something was bugging me but I couldn't quite figure out what it was, until today. I went down to the cellar on a hunch and what do you know, in a box I found a... Aquarius II. I had completely forgotten about it, I think I stowed it away in the 80's. Looks pretty much like brand new externally. Unfortunately I only have the PSU and machine itself + 2 manuals. Think I'll rummage through some more boxes tomorrow to see if I still have the casette player. The strangest thing is there's NO RAM cartridge, and I', pretty sure there never was.... but according to all the info I've found there should be one, and all the pictures I've seen shows a black cover over the cartridge port (I guess the RAM cartridge is black...?) Mine just has a white cover. Question is, do I dare to try and turn it on without opening it up first.

[@scottrowland7448]

I vividly remember playing with one back in the early 80s in ASDA Widnes, along side all the other 'popular' micros.

[@AndyMarsh]

Thanks so much for making this series, it was interesting to look at thing without the rose tinted filter of childhood memories... Yep, it was rubbish. If it does have a redeeming feature, for me it's the style. I loved the fact that the cartridge properly fits the case and it looks more like a real computer than anything Sinclair come up with (before Amstrad).

[@absinthedude]

I recall my cousin receiving one of these for Christmas 1984. His parents, lacking any knowledge of micros, went to the local computer shop and were sold an Aquarius as "the next big thing". No doubt the unscrupulous owners trying to offload a back room of the machines. I already had a ZX81 and Spectrum so my cousin was quite disappointed when the Aquarius turned up. I remember he and I tried to do something useful with it in the way of writing our own games but the crippled BASIC didn't have For/Next loops and it was hard to get beyond PRINT "Mattel Sucks". Another friend of mine had the Intellivision so having played that it was clear that Mattel/Radofin could produce a decent console. I loved Snafu on that but the Aquarius version had worse graphics, less smooth motion and ran slower without the funky soundtrack. A 16K Spectrum would have cost the same and been a much better bet. But congrats on getting a fine looking system and at least trying it out. The cassette recorder does actually look quite cool. But the inital low price was always ruined by the need to buy expensive add-ons in order to get anything useful out of the Aquarius. Definitely an unusual machine these days. My cousin persuaded his parents to take the Aquarius back and demand a Commodore 64.

[@poppasteve2976]

And here I thought my VIC 20 had the worst graphics of any 8-bit machine. This poor thing never had a chance.

[@martynhemming]

I had one of these, it was truly awful, I suspect it was on sale when my parents saw it. This series has certainly dragged up a few memories! As far as I remember the game on the right at 1:35 was "Utopia" and was actually quite good. But that was a looong time ago...

[@RetroBoxRoom]

And I thought the Sinclair ZX81 was a fun one to get programs to get working on! Great coverage yet again!

[@shelby3822]

Just sat down in the loo and new RMC - smashing

[@RMCRetro]

As it should be

[@10p6]

Like the 8-bit guys dream computer (glorified C64), I think you should start a project 'Dream Aquarius," Which for you could be Glorified Amstrad upgrade :-)

[@williamwilliam9993]

11:25 what is the music that is recorded on a tape?

[@RetroRecollections]

A great series, love seeing less successful hardware get a bit of the limelight. 👍

[@sethrd999]

On the spectrum you had 'Jumping Jack' that played a whole lot better than macho man you have there. I have to agree with you on the graphics front, no sprites or udg's is an absolute no no in close to mid 80's. With those games is run the right way to do it?, was thinking perhaps it might need something similar to a randimize usr / sys speccy/ c64 .

[@TroyFullwood]

I *love* the look of all these circa 1983 flop budget computers

[@paulrahme]

Nothing to do with the Aquarius, but surprised at how good the audio quality is coming off the first 2 cassettes - someone must've had a decent recorder back in the day!

[@kevincozens6837]

You should check both sides of the cassettes that started with music. Perhaps the programs are a little further in like that last tape that was tried in the video.

[@RMCRetro]

Don't worry the tapes were well checked. If you need an 80s disco then I have you covered. No programs sadly

[@vixtwenty8312]

Would love one of these great video mate.....triangles...

[@lepterfirefall]

I had one....had no games.....I smile when I see one but my vic 20 was tons better. Great days.

[@Jimbaloidatron]

Maybe it's the extra RAM that's faulty and not the tapes?

[@RMCRetro]

It's certainly worth investigating further, I'll see if there's a simple RAM test program or maybe just fill the memory with data and see if it falls over

[@CaptainRufus]

@@RMCRetro pal to ntsc or vice versa issues? Game requires the controllers? Tape drive needs a head cleaning? So many potential stoppers.

[@OMARENGG22]

It brought a great memories 😊

[@HappyCodingZX]

a 4mhz z80 processor is not bad at all. It makes me wonder if a z80 code wizard could perform some magic with the timings of the raster bar and get the machine to display hires graphics as was achieved on the ZX81. Currently beyond my skills but I may ask around... Update: have a look on KZbin under 'aquarius 320x200 bitmap graphics hack'

[@Juanguar]

LMAO the tapes segment had me laughing so damn hard

[@TheRetroByte]

I thought it was so funny. Laughed so hard 🤣😂😭👍

[@MxArgent]

I actually got a chance to get some hands on time with the Intellivision Keyboard Component, the Aquarius's ill-fated sorta-precursor, at VCF Midwest a few weeks ago. Interesting but unwieldy. Side note: in terms of American made micros, the TRS-80 line gets much better mileage out of pseudographics

[@numbers9to0]

Alright, going on a 80ies music binge now...

[@ian_b]

So did I. Now I'm lost in music. Caught in a trap.

[@BubbafromSapperton]

Hey I used to have one of those turtles almost 40 years ago, forgot all-about it 🤗

[@DuckGWR]

Honestly would have been surprised if someone had put games on those type II tapes, but I figured the type I tape would have a better chance

[@5speedfatty]

oh hell yea kim justice. ive spent some hours with their content.

[@Lucasrainford]

After the tape fail i noticed you only emulated the very early Aquarius games, any reason for that Neil? Great vid, been following it, love obscure systems and I do remember this in Dixons.

[@RMCRetro]

No reason Lucas I was just randomly trying out games and picking examples to highlight the character set. Thanks for watching the series

[@maglekaer1]

Maybe you should get the last three cassette tapes digitized through Audacity to see if there could be more games saved? :)

[@RMCRetro]

That could be a fun episode in itself, nice idea thank you

[@KuraIthys]

Yeah, 48k of RAM and a proper keyboard could help it a lot. It wouldn't need full bitmap graphics, but being able to use a custom character set would work wonders. After all, it worked for the 8 and 16 bit consoles - those in a general sense don't have bitmap graphics; Just tilemap (aka character graphics with some fancy extras) - that works fine because the character sets used are fully customisable.

[@pierresavoie]

I think you should keep it. Although it is not a formidable computer like the Commodore 64 or the Apple, it is a rare piece of electronics. I wish you could show us how the printer works, it was always a mystery to me. I also surprised how the games look bad on the Aquarius, when they look nice on the Intellivision, like Tron Deadly Discs and AD&D.

[@stevencarlson5422]

A land down under game is called mine I wonder if that was intentional?

[@RMCRetro]

😉

[@josephnealeUKscratchcards]

Nice video as always 👍🏻❤️

[@Turnbull50]

I remember the Aquarius in the eighties so it was nice to see your series on it. (It was always going to be a loser from day one)

[@danielson9579]

I remember logo on the bbc at school in the 80s 🙂

[@aztockdog]

Haha ‘Stalactites’ looks like the same anxiety / panic attack inducing gameplay of ‘Ram It’ for Atarr2600! 🕹😥

[@mark-andrews]

Got to mention the platform jumper game featuring Ralph the Running Man really reminds me of Imagine's Jumping Jack. Strange the contracted manufacturer Radofin had success with games marketed around the computer chip that powered the IntertonnVC 4000, and lots of TFT displayed table top games, later they went with this machine, probably the deal was more exclusive?, The 'Snafu' is a game, you probably know was 1st available for the Intellivision the game plays good, on that system.

[@queegfivehundred8197]

I was waiting for Rick Astley to be on one of the cassettes...

[@nikamota]

Imagine the crushing disapointment of getting one for christmas,a friend got one of these,he brought it round to my house. How we laughed at how pathetic it was. Ah well,it did look kinda cool.

[@zxkim8136]

Nice series Neil but I prefer my ZX81 mate .....🤗🤗Kim🤗🤗

[@johandenhertog6878]

See it use it and now it’s a rare computer. It’s my first computer and the day after I buyed the Sharp MZ700. Was better but only a monochrome picture. The Commodore 64 was my first i did games on. Basic was my first on the ZX81 latter the AMIGA 500. On school I must learn it on a expensive IBM PC 5150. The eighties has the best computers but also the worse. And now I use the ZX Spectrum 128K Toastrack with HDMI picture on my 24 inch monitor. The most time I use is on the AMIGA 1200. Which have a fast TF1260 with the 68060 Rev6 CPU on it. Would be great to use the Oric Atmos 48K which I don’t had in the eighties.

[@jagardina]

I used to use my community college library calculator to write programs.

[@peteclln5175]

Im going to sound stupid now, but microsoft basic 1.3 on the coco 2 lets you run basic programs with "run" and machine code ones with "exec" is this possibly the reason Aliens and Pac Mr wont run?

[@BigGfromSA]

I still want one. Cheers

[@CDRiley]

Aquarius make a good paperweight.

[@theannoyedmrfloyd3998]

Did you try LISTing any of the programs you loaded? Or printed them out?

[@inphanta]

I’d love to see what demoscene coders could do with this!

[@markm7558]

What would the 'Chess' machine have been like any ideas on the specs for that if it would have made a bigger impact on the market?

[@ronton9122]

Hell yeah...number 999!