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	161 1FB00	162 1FB01	163 1FB02	164 1FB03	1FB04	1FB05	167 1FB06	1FB07	169 1FB08	170 1FB09	171 1FB0A	172 1FB0B	173 1FB0C	174 1FB0D	175 1FB0E
B_ 176	176 1FB0F	177 1FB10	178 1FB11	179 1FB12	180 1FB13	181 258C	182 1FB14	183 1FB15	184 1FB16	185 1FB17	186 1FB18	187 1FB19	188 1FB1A	189 1FB1B	190 1FB1C	191 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