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TPUG Magazine Nov 84 via The Wayback Machine
“Sir, we don’t have a prototype or a price for the Spartan ad.”
“But we do have a mime.”
Mimic Systems Inc. wouldn’t ship its first product until nearly two years after it began appearing, every month, in almost every Commodore 64 magazine. And when enthusiasts finally got their hands on the Spartan in 1986, its specs felt as old as that mime’s haunting face.
Magazine reviews were tepid at best, with Mark Brown giving it two stars in INFO Issue 12. “Mimic’s Spartan is a noble experiment that just plain took too long to get to market. With all the software available by now for the Commodore 64, the Spartan’s major purpose is gone…It is both a brave attempt at something challenging and a make-believe kind of device. Don Quixote would have loved it.”
Individual users were less diplomatic. “I used it for a month & was constantly on the phone for tech support until I got tired of all the bugs & called it quits,” someone named Phil complained in the comp.sys.cmb USENET group .
And yet, one fully kitted model went for more than $5,500 in an October 2024 auction , while multiple others also received over than half that amount from bidders.
Announced in 1984. Shipped in 1986. Product market fit in 2024. But what did the Spartan actually do when it eventually hit the market? I’ll let the mime explain.
TPUG Magazine Feb 85 via The Wayback Machine
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