Aquarius Home Computer Sytems Video Presentation

[SailSweetMist]

What a sad presentation. This chap will never be a comedian, even though his choice of clothing is weird enough to laugh at. I imagine that he and his friends thought that this was very Kool! What a mistake, and more so to actually upload it for others to see.

[wayniewayne]

yes its funny but i wanted to see what it could really do

[fjccommish]

As amazing as this was, I could see kids from all over the neighborhood lining up to play. Poor parents who wanted to use the computer had to wait in a cue. With a hip guy like this as the spokesman, they must have sold billions.

[hamster700]

get a panaramic system 3000 budy 32 colors

[poopile]

Wow, I had this thing when I was 8 years old. It could only handle 64 lines of BASIC code before I had to save to cassette tape. You'd write the tape counter number down to remember what was where. I eventually took it apart.

[AY3EIGHTYNINE10]

I'm sorry, but this video just sucks. Why does the poster even HAVE an Aquarius?

At least turn the thing on so we can see how bad it sucks. A word of advice on your videos...More focus on the subject matter, and less focus on the dumbass going "hurrr" and smacking away at keys on a computer and pretending the controller is an iPod.

I thought my videos sucked, but this takes the taco by a long shot.

[iGame3D]

I hate you for being mean to my childhood friend.

But this is a funny bit of comedy.

Thanks for scanning that poster BTW.

Someone said Aquarius lacked programmable loops.

Silly person, For...Next, Goto, Gosub, man we had all the loops you could ever need. I should know I sent that little

machine into the infinite loop land more times than I could count. Maybe I should have used FinForm to keep track of my infinite loops, yeah!

[Paperclown]

This system must have been very popular for them to hire Austin Powers as a spokesman.

[fjccommish]

@Paperclown As much as the system sucks, the mini-expander makes it suck even more.

[MattelAquarius]

The Aquarius has 16 colors. It can indeed do For...Next loops in its native BASIC. It comes stock with a Z80A processor and 4k RAM. At startup, apprx 2k RAM is available to the user due to the Basic interpreter and video RAM usage. The ram was expandable, in theory up to 52k, and in practice up to 36k, with the available 32k RAM expander cart.

[MattelAquarius]

With the mini-expander, which nearly all Aquarius bundles included, the Aquarius used the same sound chip as the Intellivision. The Aquarius spawned the x-10 interface. Still, it does have its foibles like all classic machines, perhaps more than its share.

[BinaryReader]

:) someone else remembers these computers.

[fjccommish]

@MattelAquarius The main foible was that it sucked.

[MarieMelancolie]

Wow she IS your mastervoice! isnt she fantastic?!

[frigginjoe]

I was unfortunate enough to get one of these, but I tell you, the Aquarius versions of Utopia and moreso D&D Treasure of Tarmin beat the INTV versions.

Still, no excuse to own this thing. Still have mine.

[dallase1]

The Intellivision was better then this piece of crap, why did Matel even make this toy computer that was not even goo at playing games, the Intellivision ESC Keyboard had more power then Aquarius, only 8 colors? Intellivision had 16, why make a newer system worse then your older system? Even the 2600 was a better game system.

[neptho]

That one's got the expansion pack!

The Aquarius has a Z80, and roughly 2k of RAM, and I seem to recall 8 colors. There's no way to edit a line; you have to retype it; and the cassette recording was slow and awkward, even for cassette systems.

[AgentApples214]

lmao

[fjccommish]

@AgentApples214 I nearly passed out laughing when he scanned his face.

[doctorclu]

I thought this was real at first. :D

[telemetry9]

however - I wouldn't mock the aquarius.....It's definitely listening.

[telemetry9]

the aquarius was a really awful machine...basically a ZX81 with color and beep.

[RABBIDGamfan]

Not even. I actually think it makes even a ZX81 (AKA Timex Sinclair 1000, A, AKA Slimex Sinclair in the USA) look like a Cray. The Aquarius is the equivalent of an overclocked pocket calculator with color graphics and extra RAM.

[fjccommish]

@RABBIDGamfan It makes a digital watch look like a HAL 9000.

[BinaryReader]

And lack of programmiable loops  (except if you payed for the basic language expansion cartridge)

[westenburger]

duncan this is hilaroious!!!! even better than your brussel sprouts!!!!

[Z058]

what's the music in the middle of this? it's lovely!

[littlethingswulei]

that is not really bad as you told me today, duncan!