schuwalker Posted August 30, 2010 Share Posted August 30, 2010 Well I'm starting to tackle my Aquarius collection again after a lull in collecting.... Keep in mind I just collect boxed items. So... I have the Biorythms, Deadly Discs, and Nightstalker et al. Guess what??? Still missing that damn boxed MC and Chess! Seriously how rare are the these and why? Late in the life cycle of the Aquarius? You don't ever even see them loose! BTW I still you have in mind Topdog if I can't get them. It's just something about the "thrill" of the hunt and then finding them Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaybird3rd Posted August 30, 2010 Share Posted August 30, 2010 Topdog posted an item in an earlier thread about Aquarius BurgerTime which might answer your question: Burgertime was not released in solo form, but only as a pack in cartridge in the "Family Pack" which included the Aquarius Computer, Mini Expander, 16k Memory Cart, and four random games (I have a few ). So even if you purchased this Family Pack, you only had about a 25% chance of getting Burgertime. It is very difficult to find, so I'd rank it about a R8. Chess, Zero In and Melody Chase are even more difficult to find and would be more akin to R9 or R10. I could be wrong, but my impression is that Chess and Melody Chase were also distributed (by Radofin) only as part of the "Family Pack", which would explain their rarity. I don't believe either of them were ever released by Mattel. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rev Posted August 30, 2010 Share Posted August 30, 2010 Are these in cart form or the cassette tape? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaybird3rd Posted August 30, 2010 Share Posted August 30, 2010 Are these in cart form or the cassette tape? Cartridge. I know that this option isn't as interesting to a collector as owning the originals, but both titles will be included in my upcoming multi-cart. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rev Posted August 30, 2010 Share Posted August 30, 2010 Are these in cart form or the cassette tape? Cartridge. I know that this option isn't as interesting to a collector as owning the originals, but both titles will be included in my upcoming multi-cart. any idea when it is coming out? i want to play burgertime on aquarius! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaybird3rd Posted August 30, 2010 Share Posted August 30, 2010 any idea when it is coming out? i want to play burgertime on aquarius! Not to go off-topic, but it will be sometime this fall. I'm finishing the hardware revisions right now. Speaking of Aquarius BurgerTime, I made a few cosmetic changes to it--mainly getting rid of the weird characters in the screen border, which I think were a programmer error--which will make it a bit more pleasing to look at on the real hardware. I'll write more about that later, in my next update to the multi-cart thread. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rev Posted August 30, 2010 Share Posted August 30, 2010 here is a nice website with what looks like all of the available games for it. it has screens for melody chase and chess. My link Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
schuwalker Posted August 30, 2010 Author Share Posted August 30, 2010 Topdog posted an item in an earlier thread about Aquarius BurgerTime which might answer your question: Burgertime was not released in solo form, but only as a pack in cartridge in the "Family Pack" which included the Aquarius Computer, Mini Expander, 16k Memory Cart, and four random games (I have a few ). So even if you purchased this Family Pack, you only had about a 25% chance of getting Burgertime. It is very difficult to find, so I'd rank it about a R8. Chess, Zero In and Melody Chase are even more difficult to find and would be more akin to R9 or R10. I could be wrong, but my impression is that Chess and Melody Chase were also distributed (by Radofin) only as part of the "Family Pack", which would explain their rarity. I don't believe either of them were ever released by Mattel. Interesting....So they were never sold individually and didn't sell under the Mattel name.....Does that mean it was only released in European market? They really had to be released in limited numbers! I mean you never see even a loose cart of these two titles..... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaybird3rd Posted August 30, 2010 Share Posted August 30, 2010 Interesting....So they were never sold individually and didn't sell under the Mattel name.....Does that mean it was only released in European market? They really had to be released in limited numbers! I mean you never see even a loose cart of these two titles..... I'm sure they were distributed in the United States also. If nothing else, I remember hearing stories from the Blue Sky Rangers about seeing Aquarius computer packages being given away as prizes to people who attended timeshare presentations. Topdog would know better than I whether the "Family Pack" was ever offered through retail channels or if it was mail-order only, but yes, it seems clear that there were very limited numbers produced. By the way ... thanks to a generous Aquarius collector, I have received a Chess cartridge and manual on loan, so I'll now be able to provide the full text of both the Melody Chase and Chess manuals with the multi-cart. There is no mention of Mattel or Mattel Electronics anywhere in this manual, but "Mattel Electronics" still appears in the copyright on the title screen. This seems to indicate that the game was completed at Mattel, but was not distributed until after Mattel sold their Aquarius rights/inventory back to Radofin. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
the-topdog Posted August 30, 2010 Share Posted August 30, 2010 (edited) Interesting....So they were never sold individually and didn't sell under the Mattel name.....Does that mean it was only released in European market? They really had to be released in limited numbers! I mean you never see even a loose cart of these two titles..... I'm sure they were distributed in the United States also. If nothing else, I remember hearing stories from the Blue Sky Rangers about seeing Aquarius computer packages being given away as prizes to people who attended timeshare presentations. Topdog would know better than I whether the "Family Pack" was ever offered through retail channels or if it was mail-order only, but yes, it seems clear that there were very limited numbers produced. By the way ... thanks to a generous Aquarius collector, I have received a Chess cartridge and manual on loan, so I'm happy to say that the full text of both the Melody Chase and Chess manuals will be included in the multi-cart. There is no mention of Mattel or Mattel Electronics anywhere in this manual, but "Mattel Electronics" still appears in the copyright on the title screen. This seems to indicate that the game was completed at Mattel, but was not distributed until after Mattel sold their Aquarius rights/inventory back to Radofin. Jay is correct, Melody Chase and Chess were developed by Mattel but were not released until after Radofin got the rights back. However, they were not released in the Family Pack as that was a Mattel offering. A small quantity of each game were individually released in the US and overseas. Edited August 30, 2010 by the-topdog Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaybird3rd Posted August 30, 2010 Share Posted August 30, 2010 Jay is correct, Melody Chase and Chess were developed by Mattel but were not released until after Radofin got the rights back. However, they were not released in the Family Pack as that was a Mattel offering. A small quantity of each game were individually released in the US and overseas. Thanks for the clarification. Just out of curiosity, do you know if Radofin developed any new Aquarius software after Mattel returned the rights, or did they just resell the product they got from Mattel? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tempest Posted August 30, 2010 Share Posted August 30, 2010 What about Microsoft Extended Basic? Was that ever released in the US? Tempest Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
the-topdog Posted August 30, 2010 Share Posted August 30, 2010 Thanks for the clarification. Just out of curiosity, do you know if Radofin developed any new Aquarius software after Mattel returned the rights, or did they just resell the product they got from Mattel? They just resold the Mattel developed but not released software. There were third party tapes that were released with the Italian version of the Aquarius that Radofin released (Kronos Europea)... such as Gambler and Gunfight by Processor Software and Outline by Add-On Electronics. They did release two pieces of hardware independently though... the 4 color printer/plotter http://www.geekvintage.com/mattel-aquarius-4-color-printer.php and the Aquarius II which had a full stroke keyboard. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
the-topdog Posted August 30, 2010 Share Posted August 30, 2010 What about Microsoft Extended Basic? Was that ever released in the US? Tempest It was released with the Aquarius II but I do not know if it was ever released separately in the US, but I suspect that it was since other items like the Aquarius Modem that were rumored to not being released in the US actually were. One of my Modems had a Best pricetag on it (for those of you who remember the Jafco/Best stores) until the glue powdered and it fell off. http://www.geekvintage.com/mattel-aquarius-cartridge-modem.php Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
the-topdog Posted September 1, 2010 Share Posted September 1, 2010 i want to play burgertime on aquarius! I would have to say that the Aquarius port of Burgertime was the best implementation of the game at the time. And it is easily the best Aquarius game, playability wise, followed by AD&D Treasure of Tarmin. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaybird3rd Posted September 1, 2010 Share Posted September 1, 2010 I would have to say that the Aquarius port of Burgertime was the best implementation of the game at the time. And it is easily the best Aquarius game, playability wise, followed by AD&D Treasure of Tarmin. I was somewhat unimpressed by Aquarius BurgerTime when I first saw it. Now that I have it on my multi-cart, I've been playing it quite a bit on the real hardware, and I enjoy it much more. It's one of those games that just doesn't work as well in an emulator. My main issue with it was that the characters can only move in one-cell increments, which makes the animation and movement somewhat blocky and prevents the carefully-timed moves that I was used to making in the arcade version. This limitation just takes some getting used to and I've since found ways around it; in fact, by using new patterns, I can regularly drop all four enemies on every bun on the first screen. My best score on that screen so far is over 65,000 points. I still don't like that you are limited to nine lives and nine peppers, but that's only a minor complaint. One interesting trivia item: all the "sprites" in Aquarius BurgerTime are made up of two 8x8 characters, one on top of the other, so the chef is just a hat on top and legs on the bottom. To make this look a little better, they placed the hat on an orange background, which gave the chef a "face" in the area beneath it. This left undesirable lines of color along the sides of the hat, but since the orange and white tend to bleed together (especially against a black background), these lines seem to disappear. This makes the hat and the "face" more clearly defined, and it's such a successful use of color blending that some Aquarius enthusiasts seem to think that there is some trick going on in the hardware to overcome the Aquarius's two-colors-per-character limitation. You'll see this claim mentioned in newsgroups and elsewhere, but I've seen the source code for the routines that display the chef, and I know for a certainty that this is not the case: the hat is just an ordinary character, painted white on a dark orange background. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
the-topdog Posted September 1, 2010 Share Posted September 1, 2010 (edited) By the way ... thanks to a generous Aquarius collector, I have received a Chess cartridge and manual on loan, so I'll now be able to provide the full text of both the Melody Chase and Chess manuals with the multi-cart. Awesome! Will you be making scans of the manual available for download on the Aquarius Group on Yahoo? EDIT: LOL I guess I should have looked first... you already have it there Edited September 1, 2010 by the-topdog Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaybird3rd Posted September 1, 2010 Share Posted September 1, 2010 Awesome! Will you be making scans of the manual available for download on the Aquarius Group on Yahoo? EDIT: LOL I guess I should have looked first... you already have it there Yup, I posted it last night. Aquarius Chess is a surprisingly sophisticated program that has a lot more features than I was aware of, so it's great to finally have a manual to go with it. I've got one or two more manuals to scan, and I'll probably convert Bill Liscombe's scans of the Melody Chase manual to PDF as well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
the-topdog Posted September 2, 2010 Share Posted September 2, 2010 Yup, I posted it last night. Aquarius Chess is a surprisingly sophisticated program that has a lot more features than I was aware of, so it's great to finally have a manual to go with it. I've got one or two more manuals to scan, and I'll probably convert Bill Liscombe's scans of the Melody Chase manual to PDF as well. By the way Jay, I posted some lame screenshots and video of the never before seen Aquarius games Strike Force and Space Collision over here http://www.atariage.com/forums/topic/162168-new-mattel-aquarius-games-discovered/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
schuwalker Posted September 2, 2010 Author Share Posted September 2, 2010 By the way ... thanks to a generous Aquarius collector, I have received a Chess cartridge and manual on loan, so I'll now be able to provide the full text of both the Melody Chase and Chess manuals with the multi-cart. Awesome! Will you be making scans of the manual available for download on the Aquarius Group on Yahoo? EDIT: LOL I guess I should have looked first... you already have it there Cool I have to join this site! I love all the Aquarius talk...... I remember my folks picked up a Aquarius at K&B toy stores for like twenty bucks(somewhere around there.) I also got a couple the following games: Astrosmash, Deadly Discs, Nightstalker and I believe the other one was Snafu. I didn't program or anything on the Aqaurius; was just used for gaming. Fast forward, we move, I believe the system was sold in a garage sale and yada yada yada. In the early 2,000's I started collecting vintage stuff I used to have. Priority one was the TI, Priority 2 was the Aquarius! Picked a boxed "complete version" Aquarius and some games like D&D and Biorythyms...So it began! Till oh I what say about 5 years ago didn't know the existance of Melody Chase, Chess and Burgertime-NEVER recall seeing them at the stores...so the quest begins for these guys! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaybird3rd Posted September 2, 2010 Share Posted September 2, 2010 Cool I have to join this site! Here is a link to it. It's been a little quiet there for the past few months, but hopefully my multi-cart project will shake things up a bit as it gets closer to completion. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
schuwalker Posted September 2, 2010 Author Share Posted September 2, 2010 Cool I have to join this site! Here is a link to it. It's been a little quiet there for the past few months, but hopefully my multi-cart project will shake things up a bit as it gets closer to completion. Thank you!!!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
the-topdog Posted September 14, 2010 Share Posted September 14, 2010 Oh! I forgot to mention that Aquarius Chess was also released on tape. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+MattelAquarius Posted October 8, 2010 Share Posted October 8, 2010 Oh! I forgot to mention that Aquarius Chess was also released on tape. The cassette version is actually a separate game developed independently by a third party company in Europe. Both versions can be seen and read about at my Youtube channel: www.youtube.com/mattelaquarius Here are both videos: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vintagegamecrazy Posted October 8, 2017 Share Posted October 8, 2017 Time to bump this thread for a few more questions. I've been trying to build my Aquarius rarity/collecting list and have these two ever been confirmed to be sold in the USA or just Europe? Also what is the status on Zero-In and Space Speller? European exclusive and are they just as rare as Melody Chase and Chess? Here's to some day being to find any of these four for the collection. I've never seen Chess for sale and Melody Chase has turned up and been sold like twice in fifteen years now. Low odds of finding it for sure! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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