Aquarius



"Truly simple!"

After the success of the Intellivision, Mattel decided it was time to invest in home computers. But what kind of computer do you get from a toy maker? A toy computer, pretty much. The Aquarius was a machine right out of the previous decade, even lacking programmable graphics: everything on the screen had to be built from a built-in set of glyphs. So all games in its meager library, mostly Intellivision ports, looked much worse than those on the then-aging console. Mattel quickly gave it back to Radofin (the contractor that actually built the Aquarius), who used aggressive price cuts to extend its life a few months. But even then it kept having its ass whipped by the ZX Spectrum, so it was soon discontinued.