Mattel Aquarius character set

When Mattel decided to market a home computer, it did not start by designing one, and instead looked around for a pre-made system it could market under its name. It discovered that one of its manufacturing partners, the Hong Kong based Radofin Electronics Far East, had already designed a three-system line of home computers. All Mattel had to do was secure the U.S. marketing rights, which it promptly did for the first two units in the line, and have Radofin handle the manufacturing.[1]

The simplest unit, originally code-named "Checkers" and which was eventually named the Aquarius (Model #5931), did have some good things going for it. The 13.5 x 6 x 2 inch unit was equipped with the same Z-80A microprocessor used in many other home and business computers of the era (although some units had a different but still Z-80A compatible processor, like the NEC D780C or the Hitachi HD64180); it had built-in BASIC, being a subset of full Microsoft BASIC; it had the ability to utilize cartridge-based games and other software; and, it had a color video display (16 foreground and 16 background colors, with 40 character x 24 line text). But it also featured a mere 4K of RAM (along with its 8K of ROM) with only about 1.7K free for BASIC programs, a "chicklet" keyboard with just 48 keys (on an 8-line-in, 6-line-out matrix) and a reset button, a one-voice tone generator for sound, no programmable graphics, no sprites, no game controllers, no monitor port (it attached to a TV only), a non-standard printer interface, ordinary cassette access at 600 baud, and no expansion capability except for what could be plugged into the cartridge port. Given that the unit was introduced in 1983, these features did not make it strongly competitive in the home computer market.[1]

To address some of the limitations, Mattel added a larger character set to the original Radofin design, so that games could use character graphics.[1]

Character set

The following table shows the Mattel Aquarius character set. Each character is shown with a potential Unicode equivalent if available. Space characters are represented by the abbreviations for their names.

Mattel Aquarius[2][3][4]

	_0	_1	_2	_3	_4	_5	_6	_7	_8	_9	_A	_B	_C	_D	_E	_F
0_ 0	£ 00A3	½ 00BD	¼ 00BC	¾ 00BE	÷ 00F7	© 00A9	→ 2192	← 2190	↑ 2191	↓ 2193	↗ 2197	↙ 2199	↘ 2198	↖ 2196	�	�
1_ 16	�	�	▮ 25AE	�	�	�	�	�	�	�	▗ 2597	▝ 259D	▖ 2596	▘ 2598	▚ 259A	▄ 2584
2_ 32	SP 0020	! 0021	" 0022	# 0023	$ 0024	% 0025	& 0026	' 0027	( 0028	) 0029	* 002A	+ 002B	, 002C	- 002D	. 002E	/ 002F
3_ 48	0 0030	1 0031	2 0032	3 0033	4 0034	5 0035	6 0036	7 0037	8 0038	9 0039	: 003A	; 003B	< 003C	= 003D	> 003E	? 003F
4_ 64	@ 0040	A 0041	B 0042	C 0043	D 0044	E 0045	F 0046	G 0047	H 0048	I 0049	J 004A	K 004B	L 004C	M 004D	N 004E	O 004F
5_ 80	P 0050	Q 0051	R 0052	S 0053	T 0054	U 0055	V 0056	W 0057	X 0058	Y 0059	Z 005A	[ 005B	\ 005C	] 005D	^ 005E	_ 005F
6_ 96	` 0060	a 0061	b 0062	c 0063	d 0064	e 0065	f 0066	g 0067	h 0068	i 0069	j 006A	k 006B	l 006C	m 006D	n 006E	o 006F
7_ 112	p 0070	q 0071	r 0072	s 0073	t 0074	u 0075	v 0076	w 0077	x 0078	y 0079	z 007A	{ 007B	| 007C	} 007D	~ 007E	█ 2588
8_ 128	▇ 2587	▏ 258F	�	�	🮏 1FB8F	🮌 1FB8C	▒ 2592	● 25CF	▂ 2582	▆ 2586	♠ 2660	�	�	�	▶ 25B6	▲ 25B2
9_ 144	▁ 2581	▉ 2589	�	�	🮎 1FB8E	🮍 1FB8D	⬤ 2B24	▎ 258E	▍ 258D	▌ 258C	�	�	�	�	◀ 25C0	▼ 25BC
A_ 160	NBSP 00A0	1FB00	1FB01	1FB02	1FB03	1FB04	1FB05	1FB06	1FB07	1FB08	1FB09	1FB0A	1FB0B	1FB0C	1FB0D	1FB0E
B_ 176	1FB0F	1FB10	1FB11	1FB12	1FB13	258C	1FB14	1FB15	1FB16	1FB17	1FB18	1FB19	1FB1A	1FB1B	1FB1C	1FB1D
C_ 192	◢ 25E2	◣ 25E3	�	▊ 258A	▪ 25AA	♦ 2666	· 00B7	�	┼ 253C	�	╱ 2571	�	┴ 2534	├ 251C	┐ 2510	└ 2514
D_ 208	�	�	�	�	♥ 2665	♣ 2663	│ 2502	�	╳ 2573	�	╲ 2572	�	┬ 252C	┤ 2524	┌ 250C	┘ 2518
E_ 224	1FB1E	1FB1F	1FB20	1FB21	1FB22	1FB23	1FB24	1FB25	1FB26	1FB27	2590	1FB28	1FB29	1FB2A	1FB2B	1FB2C
F_ 240	1FB2D	1FB2E	1FB2F	1FB30	1FB31	1FB32	1FB33	1FB34	1FB35	1FB36	1FB37	1FB38	1FB39	1FB3A	1FB3B	█ 2588

  Letter   Number   Punctuation   Symbol   Other   Undefined   � No Unicode equivalent

References

1. Horvat/Parrish, "Mattel Aquarius FAQ," May 6, 2001.
2. http://www.vdsteenoven.com/aquarius/
3. "Figure 4. Mattel Aquarius character set", L2/19-025: Proposal to add characters from legacy computers and teletext to the UCS (PDF), 2019-01-04, p. 20
4. Sources for L2/19-025 (PDF), 2019-01-04