Computing history, especially during the 80s, is full of sad tales of ambitious, advanced computers (for the time) that never quite found their niche, or were ultimately defeated by market forces. The Mattel Aquarius failed because, by every objective measure, it was a truly terrible machine.
Produced by toy giants Mattel who had done very well with the Intellivision games console, it was released in June 1983 to a market that had seen the BBC Micro, the Commodore 64 and the Sinclair Spectrum emerge a year earlier. You would be forgiven for thinking they would have used the Intellivision as a technical platform for a computer, but no; they bought in a system from Hong Kong-based Radofin.
It shared the Z80 processor of the Spectrum, but came with only 4K of built-in memory (whereas even the cheapest Spectrum had 16K). In terms of graphics, the machine was limited to text only – there was no way to draw pixels or sprites. To mitigate this, the Aquarius character set came with lots of pre-defined games-style characters, such as a running man, a robot, explosions and the like. However, if you wanted a sprite that wasn’t built in, or to draw line art, you were out of luck. The keyboard was terrible – making even the Spectrum keyboard seem like a tactile marvel. Not only was the feel awful, but the layout seemed to be designed to frustrate anyone with any experience of any other keyboard. And the software library was limited – of the 32 titles announced, only 21 were ever actually released.
About the only thing the Aquarius had going for it was that it was cheap – but so were other, technically superior machines. Released for USD $160, it entered the market when Commodore and Texas Instruments were in the middle of their price war. You could pick up a TI-99/4A or Vic-20 for less – both far better machines.
The machine was discontinued in October 1983, so was on the market for only a few short months. Mattel’s own developers mocked the machine, giving it the slogan “Aquarius: a system for the seventies”. However, in modern times it has picked up a small community of retro enthusiasts who enjoy the challenge of the machine’s limitations, and this community produces modern software and hardware for the Aquarius.