Nothing yells classic more than the age old arcade hit Joust. Made most popular by the coin operated arcades and the old Atari systems. Joust is a two player game that is basically a head-to-head fight game featuring warriors on ostrich-back. It was released in the early eighties by Atari, Incorporated after programming by the early developers, Williams Electronic Games. It is a static third-person platform game.
The user is, in fact, a noble knight. His equally noble steed is an ostrich that can barely fly, but can jump and glide reasonably well for an ostrich.
When playing a single player game, the ostrich knights fight waves of giant buzzards by jousting against them. If the player’s lance is higher than his opponent’s lance, the buzzard will lay an egg and die. The user must then collect said egg before it hatches to gain points and prevent it from hatching into an even more powerful enemy vulture knight.
The levels do not change in appearance in Joust. There are a half a dozen platforms, some of which wrap around to the adjoining side of the screen. On the ground are an island platform and the edges feature pits of lava that will kill the user if his ostrich flies into it. The enemies will obviously also kill the jousters. There are three types of
enemy knights that are discernable by their different colors. Each knight has a different flying/fighting style, and they are varying in difficulty. The red knight, or bounder, is the basic knight that mostly takes up space and gets in the user’s way by jumping from platform to platform. The white knight is the hunter and will actively attack the user. The hardest knight is blue and is known as the Shadow Lord. The knights have a hard time killing him, and actually have to win two jousts with him in order to force him into producing an egg. The wave is over when all of the eggs and enemy knights have been dispatched. If the user takes too long, a huge swooping pterodactyl will enter the screen and attack the user’s ostrich.
Joust is a very good, classic Atari-style game. It still provided hours of fun back in the day, and is a great nostalgic trip now and still provides some good hand-eye challenges. It is also great fun to play in gladiator mode against a friend. Download it and give it a try.
