Joust

Description

In Joust, players take control of a knight with a lance who rides their flying ostrich (or stork, for Player 2) to do battle against computer-controlled evil knights who ride atop vultures.

Players must flap their steed's wings to hit the enemy from a higher jousting point to destroy the vulture and its rider. Once the enemy has been hit, an egg falls to one of the platforms below. The heroic knights must destroy the eggs before they hatch and release new and increasingly more difficult knights. The three strengths of enemy knights are Bounder (red knight), Hunter (white knight), and Shadow Lord (blue knight). These enemy knights are not the only challenge to be found in the game. Players must also contend with crumbling platforms, lava trolls who attempt to pull knights into the fire, and the dreaded "unbeatable"(?) pterodactyl.

The game was novel for its time for being one of the few two-player simultaneous games in the arcade.

Part of the Following Groups

• Joust variants
• Video games turned into board / card games

Merchant Title Platform Price   Joust NES $0.01   Joust     Please select your country: United States Argentina Australia Austria Belgium Brazil Brunei Bulgaria Canada Chile China Colombia Croatia Cyprus Czech Republic Denmark Estonia Finland France Georgia Germany Greece Hong Kong Hungary Iceland India Indonesia Ireland Israel Italy Japan Latvia Lithuania Luxembourg Macau Macedonia Malaysia Malta Mexico The Netherlands New Zealand Norway Philippines Poland Portugal Romania Russia Saudi Arabia Serbia Singapore Slovakia Slovenia South Africa South Korea Spain Sweden Switzerland Taiwan Thailand Turkey Ukraine United Kingdom Uruguay Vietnam Other Worldwide Not an American user?

User Reviews

A classic.	PC Booter	Tomer Gabel (4418)
Thou shalt kill those buzzards	NES	*Katakis* (37451)
Another bullseye for the Lynx porting legacy.	Lynx	Trixter (8728)

The Press Says

IGN	Lynx	Jul 06, 1999	10 out of 10	100
Defunct Games	Lynx	Apr 02, 2005	88 out of 100	88
NES Archives	NES	Mar 03, 2009	B+	83
Génération 4	Atari ST	1987	80 out of 100	80
Power Unlimited	Lynx	Jan, 1994	8 out of 10	80
IGN	Xbox 360	Dec 02, 2005	7.5 out of 10	75
Game Freaks 365	Atari 2600	Jul 03, 2007	7.2 out of 10	72
TeamXbox	Xbox 360	Dec 08, 2005	7 out of 10	70
Jeuxvideo.com	Atari ST	Jul 01, 2011	12 out of 20	60
Video Game Talk	Xbox 360	Jun 19, 2006		60

Forums

There are currently no topics for this game.

Trivia

One "bug" in the program's design became a strategic advantage to players in the know, later touted by producers as a "hidden feature". On the right side of the screen there are two platforms situated so that one is above and slightly overhangs another. If a player moves across the lower of the two platforms, the player will hit the upper one and be halted. However, if a player flies their bird so that its belly skims the lower platform low enough that its legs do not extend, the bird will "belly flop" across the width of the platform, and, illogically, "squeeze" through the meeting point of the two platforms, shooting out below the upper platform.

Skilled players took advantage of this flaw as a gaming strategy: a player could suddenly pop out below the platform and land on an enemy knight below (or a competing player), catching him by surprise. Game creator John Newcomer stated in interviews that this flaw in the game's design was so popular, they decided to intentionally leave it in and it became a permanent part of the game.