[CRACK Aquazone 1.5
Rancul Ratha
The common answer is horse armor; while not the first on the 360 (Godfather, for instance, sold individual cheat codes) it was the big headlining item for "Useless shit you can spend five dollars on".
Going earlier, it gets murky. There were some titles that let you buy maps on the original Xbox but a lot of items there ended up just being free DLC. I'm sure the realm of MMO and proto-Free to Play titles had some contenders. But me? It was 1999, and I had just received a virtual aquarium.
Aquazone was a Japanese Windows and Macintosh title developed by OPeNBooK 9003inc. (who you may recognize from Yoot Tower) and published in the US by Mindscape. Aquazone simulates an aquarium with a striking amount of detail. A new file gives you an aquarium full of tap water you need to condition into livable specifications for the fish you've chosen. Then you gotta feed them, make sure they don't get sick all while providing an enriching environment they can feel comfortable in. It was also a vehicle designed to sell you a lot of fish .movs. The pitch is this: You've bought your digital aquarium - now you need to go to the digital pet store. This is a concept that is both way ahead of its time and also completely insane and as such, has earned its own section. Back to that in a bit.
As far as I can tell, these were all incremental upgrades on one another. Aquazone Deluxe brought the game to Windows 95 while Deluxe II (Still with Guppies) brought, well, guppies and animated detail object support.
Each fish species needs a specific environment to survive and thrive in. Your pH balance and chemical composition all matter here along with water temperature, though luckily the base game neon tetras and leopard catfish can coexist pretty well in the same environment. Feeding your fish requires doing some basic math, in which you need to figure out how many spoonfuls your digital pets need without starving them or leaving so much left over it rots and contaminates the tank.
Luckily, the game ships with its own reference set in a separate executable giving you all the information you need to have a successful tank. It's in-depth enough that I feel you could probably apply it to a real world aquarium and do well.
Once your fish are comfortable enough, they'll start to breed and produce offspring. There's an entire tips page dedicated to fish fornication with many helpful details. It's also very upfront in telling you that you'll need to either shell out some cash or start making your own fish at home.
All of these links go to the Internet Archive version of this site, and I invite you to click around. Go through the timeline - let the horror sink in as you realize they were absolutely serious about this endeavor.
Assuming you went with the smallest amount of fish but still wanted it all, you'd be spending a call $485.80 in 1999 dollars. Adjusting for inflation, that would be a brisk $868.992022 dollars - or three Star Citizen Constellation Andromedas with some change left over to buy a few gameplay elements that don't exist yet. The more things change.
I can't tell you what the purchase or installation method of this late 90's DLC was. After all, I was 10; and upon first look at this bold new concept my father had many things to say, such as "Absolutely not" and "You're just gonna have to live with the fish that came with the game."
Of course, it would have been a massive waste of money. This game was way beyond my level (or my attention span) at that age. Within the course of two months I had managed to kill off every single pre-installed fish through either neglect or cluelessness. It was a learning experience with many subjects, such as "Fish don't like tap water" and "Fish prefer to have food every day".
Still years away from learning that you could get things on the internet for free, I never got to experience anything more than a tank full of neon tetras. Not that this was the worst, tetras were my favorite fish after all.
I'd forget about the game for random spans of time, only to find the disc, re-install and then go through the same cycle. Eventually I lost the disc and the whole experience nestled itself deep in the recesses of my memory, a digital cryptid periodically popping up can causing me to think "Fuck, what was that thing called? Was it even real?"
Aquazone itself faded right into obscurity, failing to catch on in the US. It would receive a port to the Nintendo DS and a brand new Xbox 360 version, but these remain Japanese exclusives. The last release stateside amounted to little more than a 3D animated screensaver for Windows XP and above.
Locating it later in life proved difficult. I vividly remembered this game existing - and the impact of the "virtual pet store" would be etched in my brain forever. Finding it was another matter when I had long since forgotten the proper name. Let me tell you, searching "Aquarium Simulator Windows", even as far back as ten years ago, will bring up a tidal wave of garbage and none of it is Aquazone. The relief that rushed over me one afternoon idly watching ThorHighHeel's video on Obscure Saturn Games and out of nowhere the Fucking Fish Game From my Childhood Just Appears. Holy shit. It's actually existed!
Nowadays, you can find a number of items on Steam that at first glance seem like they'll scratch that itch, with titles such as Aquarium Designer and Aquarist. Aquarium Designer is a game I actually purchased - and then refunded about an hour later. You can make some very pretty tanks, but there isn't much afterwards, just not what I'm looking for. Maybe Aquazone went too far with the pre-Animal Crossing "watch water condition in real time" feature, maybe they should have tried literally any other monetization scheme. But what remains is still a unique experience, deep enough to waste hours of your life while lightweight enough to just putter along in the background, your virtual fish friends keeping you company while the virtual water pump bubbles away - something much harder to pull off in a full screen Unreal Engine 4 experience.
If you want to try and run Aquazone today you'll need a VM in just about every case. As far as I can tell the trajectory of this game was Mac System 7.0 -> Windows 3.1 -> Windows 95. Windows XP seems to be the last version of Windows that will entertain the idea of running this game and the installer is a retro gaming favorite, 16 bit InstallShield 3.0. 32bit versions of Vista and 7 may have some limited success, but at its heart this game wants to live in a Windows 9X environment. At least the installation media can be found everywhere once you know the actual title to search for, on Abandonware sites, Archive.org and even the remaining Aquazone fan-sites. There's custom content, including usermade fish, decorations and backgrounds, all for free. In addition? Every single piece of DLC they ever produced.
That screenshot at the top of this post? Illegal fish. Those plants have broken the license agreement. These downloads also include Japanese exclusive fish and items which released in expansion packs like a normal fucking game. Not to mention backgrounds, which you can create and select in-game without any sort of external program or conversion process needed. This wasn't a secret either, they had instructions up on the website.
i remember as a kid having a copy of deluxe 2 that came with the gateway pc my family purchased in the late 90s, my sister and i spent many hours with this game and got pretty good at breeding the fish!
but one thing i remember vividly that i never heard of again was that on the disc we had there was a sort of virtual art installation which showcased other upcoming features, one of which was a game like aquazone but for pet birds. i remember wanting that so badly but i suppose it just never was made, or never made it to north america
795a8134c1