stupus Mattel Aquarius collection

[+stupus]

Well some said it couldn't be done, others said it shouldn't be done, while still others said.....Aquarius? But i present to you what i believe to be the 1st complete boxed Mattel Aquarius cartridge game collection ever!!

After about 15-20 years of collecting for the Aquarius i have finally managed to get every game....and in box! As well as many tape games and oddities!

The aquarius was never a computer i had as a kid I had a c64 then an amiga 500 and played lots of trs-80 coco as well. But i have had and collected intellivision for about 37 years now and it is one of my most beloved systems....so by proxy it seemed fitting to also start collecting for its ugly step sibling the Aquarius!

So I present to be what I believe is the first family photo of all the boxed cartridge programs ever.....if im wrong please let me know...if you also put yourself thru this! Lol

 

And of course I had to collect the Radofin releases too! Radofin originally designed the Aquarius themselves...then Mattel contracted them to manufacture it for them under Mattels name...then Mattel paid them to take it back!!! And I'm not even joking here!

Not sure if there is a Radofin release for every title? But these are the ones I have found aside from the Radofin only releases in the first pic.

 

And here are the tapes i have collected....maybe just over 1/2 of those known to exist. This may include a full Add-On brand games collection....all of the first 20 titles by serial number....is there more?

 

A signed Utopia by Steve Roney.....one of my favorite if not most favorite intellivision games!

 

Some of my random books and catalogs, etc......need to dig out the rest!

 

Below is I believe all 6 issues of the Aquarius User magazine....is there more than 6??

 

Some misc. Aquarius paperwork i have never seen before!

 

Also never seen before....the shipping carton for the Kronos system bundle.....this was the Italian release of the Aquarius with its own branding!

 

 

 

Hope you enjoyed seeing it all! More to come some time with pics of hardware and more misc!!

 

*Games are all in the super swell new box protectors from William Hoskinson....

https://hoskinson-industries.myshopify.com/collections/aquarius

[+cmart604]

Congrats! ?????? Very nice! I’m hoping to join this club one day. 

[+stupus]

2 minutes ago, cmart604 said:

Congrats! ?????? Very nice! I’m hoping to join this club one day. 

The 16ers club! More exclusive than the 125 club lol

[+cmart604]

10 minutes ago, stupus said:

The 16ers club! More exclusive than the 125 club lol

Haha! Totally! 

[Atari_Bill]

So very cool.  I’ll never find the tough ones but I love seeing them here.   Congrats!

[EdgeOfPortal]

Very impressive! I’ll get there eventually...

[wolfy62]

Awesome stuff,wow!

Simply,wow!!!??

[Humblejack]

Very, very nice. Gets the ol blood a pumping. 

[krslam]

Very cool to see them all together.  Congrats!

[+JasonlikesINTV]

Congrats!  Quite an impressive achievement!

[+stupus]

Thank you all! Very fun to share this here!

 

I am curious how close some other collectors are? Would love for those getting close to post how many they have and what they miss if they want.

I know of 1 other collector who has every cart but is missing 1 box still.

[Atari_Bill]

1 hour ago, stupus said:

Thank you all! Very fun to share this here!

 

I am curious how close some other collectors are? Would love for those getting close to post how many they have and what they miss if they want.

I know of 1 other collector who has every cart but is missing 1 box still.

Not me.  I’m missing the 4 big ones as well as extended BASIC. So essentially I’ve likely gone as far as I can go. 

[Captain_Combat]

Nice cassette artwork ?

[+stupus]

2 hours ago, Atari_Bill said:

Not me.  I’m missing the 4 big ones as well as extended BASIC. So essentially I’ve likely gone as far as I can go. 

Thats a full mattel set anyway. I dont think i have ever seen those 5 labeled mattel only radofin.

[krslam]

I'm not close.  Have 12 of the carts (plus the two RAM expanders), only half of them boxed, and none of the cassettes.  As I don't use ebay, I'm not likely to get any closer so I'll just have to be satisfied with my AquariCart.

[jaybird3rd]

Beautiful collection!  It makes my mouth water to see all the Aquarius cartridges together at once.

 

It looks as if your Zero In is a white box with an instruction manual cover on the front.  I was already aware that Chess was shipped this way, but seeing a white box Zero In is very interesting.  I've seen evidence that some of the latter-day Aquarius distributors were shipping Aquarius games with incomplete or replacement materials as their stocks started running low: photocopied keyboard overlays, missing hand controller overlays, etc.  I have a scanned brochure from Bentley Industries with notes to that effect written in the margins, presumably by a customer who called them in the mid-1980s to make inquiries about what was still available.  I've also seen evidence that Zero In had a printed box at some point: the collector's website is offline now—and the Wayback Machine does not appear to have saved a complete snapshot—but I distinctly remember that he once had a picture of a complete Zero In box in a stack of other Aquarius boxes, viewed from the side, with the title printed in orange like Melody Chase.  (He was kind enough to provide a scan of the manual for me for the Aquaricart project, but I'd really love to see that box!)  So, I'm now wondering if certain games were shipped in full boxes and later in plain white boxes; if so, Zero In would appear to be one of them.  It's one of the mysteries that makes Aquarius collecting so interesting!

 

On 5/30/2020 at 3:56 PM, stupus said:

I am curious how close some other collectors are? Would love for those getting close to post how many they have and what they miss if they want.

The only cartridges I'm missing are the hardest ones to get: Space Speller, Zero In, Chess, and Extended BASIC.  An original 16K RAM module has also eluded me so far, but since I can make my own 32K modules, I haven't been in too much of a rush to get one except for archival purposes.  I'd love to get complete scans of all of these boxes for my website (still under construction!).

[+stupus]

Yes, zero in and chess are both white boxes with a color sticker applied only to the front.

I actually had another zero in that was just a white box with a tiny sticker printed in dot matrix that just said zero in.

So i believe these last 2 titles only came with the white boxes with the color sticker and when they ran out of those stickers they just put the small name sticker on the front.

But i could be wrong there could be full color boxes of those 2 as well but i have never seen them.

I am curious if chess had controller overlays too as mine doesnt have them and the manual doesnt mention them.

I thonk every other title had them besides the 4 utilities.

I would be ha ppy to get scans of the stuff you miss.

I also might sell a boxed 16k module if you wanted 1 still.

[krslam]

I don't see a 4K module in your set.  Part of the upcoming hardware photos?

[+stupus]

It should be! I believe its packed in with my big system bundle shipping carton set that i didnt have out handy Hopefully its not missing lol

[jaybird3rd]

15 hours ago, stupus said:

Yes, zero in and chess are both white boxes with a color sticker applied only to the front.

I actually had another zero in that was just a white box with a tiny sticker printed in dot matrix that just said zero in.

So i believe these last 2 titles only came with the white boxes with the color sticker and when they ran out of those stickers they just put the small name sticker on the front.

But i could be wrong there could be full color boxes of those 2 as well but i have never seen them.

Interesting!  It would be great if we had a more definitive answer to that question: I had never seen evidence of a Zero In box before that one collector's picture (which I dearly wish I'd kept!), and as far as I'm aware, Chess never got a full box.  (I'm designing a "mockup" Chess box for my website, so at least we can get a 3D view of what it might have looked like!)

 

Quote

I am curious if chess had controller overlays too as mine doesnt have them and the manual doesnt mention them.

I think every other title had them besides the 4 utilities.

Chess did originally come with overlays, but only for the keyboard, since the game does not support hand controllers.

 

Quote

I would be happy to get scans of the stuff you miss.

I also might sell a boxed 16k module if you wanted 1 still.

Thank you very much!  I'd like to take you up on that, especially for the Space Speller and Extended BASIC boxes.  If possible, when you scan them, it would be ideal if you could fold the boxes flat against the scanner bed, with all flaps extended and with a book large enough to cover the entire surface area placed on top to make them as flat as possible.  (If you fold the boxes flat with the front face facing downward and the seam facing upward, the boxes should fold naturally and should not be damaged by additional creasing, since this is how they were folded when they were originally assembled.  Folding it in this way will allow you to capture four of the six sides in one scan; then, simply flip the box over and re-scan in the same way to capture the remaining sides.)  I've tried to preserve all printed materials in their best possible state, and full color scans of at least 600dpi would give me as many opportunities to fix as many flaws in the boxes as possible.

[schuwalker]

On 5/30/2020 at 3:56 PM, stupus said:

Thank you all! Very fun to share this here!

 

I am curious how close some other collectors are? Would love for those getting close to post how many they have and what they miss if they want.

I know of 1 other collector who has every cart but is missing 1 box still.

I'm pretty much throwing the towel on the rare ones at this point... 

 

We had pretty much had all the common ones that were purchased when the Aquarius was being liquidated (we purchased ours at K&B Toys). The only one I couldn't find bitd was Burgertime. Had to get that one in the late '90s via eBay.

 

The one I still want to get is (boxed) Melody Chase though. I'm still not sure if this was released in the states (couldn't find it bitd). There sure are a number of eBay US sellers over the years that were auctioning theirs off... makes you wonder maybe some of these eeeeked through to some store merchants.

 

Anybody else buy their Aquarius bitd new or liquidated?

[EdgeOfPortal]

1 hour ago, schuwalker said:

I'm pretty much throwing the towel on the rare ones at this point... 

 

We had pretty much had all the common ones that were purchased when the Aquarius was being liquidated (we purchased ours at K&B Toys). The only one I couldn't find bitd was Burgertime. Had to get that one in the late '90s via eBay.

 

The one I still want to get is (boxed) Melody Chase though. I'm still not sure if this was released in the states (couldn't find it bitd). There sure are a number of eBay US sellers over the years that were auctioning theirs off... makes you wonder maybe some of these eeeeked through to some store merchants.

 

Anybody else buy their Aquarius bitd new or liquidated?

I can’t tell you I bought it new, but I can tell you that they were indeed released in the states. Along with my 32K Memory, I received a New Worlds sales sheet, in which the customer wrote notes about many products.

They wrote down the Bentley Industries address in California, and the rest of the notes detail various things about Aquarius items they had asked Bentley about. From the notes I can tell you when this order was placed, 32K Memory, and Space Speller were available to order from Bentley.

 

Melody Chase, Chess, Extended Basic, Zero-In are all mentioned on the sales sheet, but there’s no notes written by the customer for those, so I can’t tell you if they were available. 
 

I doubt they were ever available at a retail store though. I think it’s probably mail-order only.

[+stupus]

I was going to say pretty much the same thing. I doubt any of the radofin titles saw release at stores in the usa.....maybe not even abroad. But i think you could order any of them by mail from the various vendors radofin used. I have a cib ntsc radofin system and it also has paperwork with it that had them all listed for mail order.