I came back from vacation to a note that read “So sorry about your fishies ... I think they missed you an awful lot.” Disease had wiped out the pets in my little live aquarium. A couple of days later, a coworker placed a copy of Aquazone by my Mac. Some hard-core aquarists have schooled together and designed the ultimate virtual aquarium. This is digital life — these electronic pets require daily attention.
Everything you need is provided, so setup is easy. You choose a tank based on screen size, not gallons — the stock filter, heater, and light are in place. There are also five kinds of gravel; a handful of decorative elements like plants, wood, and mini statuary; and ten tank-backdrop designs.
Aquazone comes with two species of fish: leopard catfish and neon tetra. That strikes me as darn few fish, but the programmers don’t see it that way. They’ve handcrafted animations for roughly 20 individual fish per species, for a total of 40 fish, from eggs to aquarium old-timers of several years in age. Still, I can’t tell the fish apart except for obvious size differences. There appear to be four sizes of each species — egg, tiny, medium, and big — and frankly, if I get 40 fish, I’d rather have 10 species in four sizes than 2 species in four sizes.
The company says it’s committed to bringing out more fish species. A series of option disks ($19.95 each) have more accessories, more plants, and one new species of fish per disk.
The minimum RAM requirement is 2.5MB, but that doesn’t buy much simulation stimulation: the program crashed when I tried to import food into a 13-inch tank with two fish and some sand. That spartan arrangement worked in a 10-inch tank — with room to spare for a small plant. Bump it up to 8MB to build a pleasant, well-stocked aquarium.
A few days after setting up my tank, I had a diseased fish. The situation turned ugly fast: a week later all my virtual pets were dead, their little rotting corpses littering the floor of the aquarium until I exported them to the Toilet. I suspected that they didn’t like going the weekend without food. The simulation speed adjusts from 0 to 100, but even with the lowest-speed simulation on the weekends, my fish still died. So did those of another Aquazone aquarium-loving coworker. I’ve read the manual — which could almost be a guide to maintaining an actual aquarium — looking for clues as to why these fish are so darned hard to keep alive, with no luck.
The Last Word Even so, I like having Aquazone in the background. It’s very soothing. Would I buy it over the real thing? No, but then again, how many offices permit several gallons of water sitting next to computer equipment?
Courteau, Suzanne. (January 1995). Aquazone 1.0. Macworld. (pg. 85).
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Games
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Aquazone.sit
Emulating this? It could probably run under: 
Basilisk II
