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Joust

Arcade

Arcade

You are a knight flying on an ostrich, battling buzzard-mounted enemies. To fly, you repeatedly hit the flap button. To topple the Buzzard-Riders "the highest lance wins." Two-player head-to-head play is excellent. Each player controls a different knight and each of them rides a different moun...

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Developer
Williams Electronics

Released on
1982

Size
1–2 Players

Version
Arcade

Requirements
Arcade

Downloads
Action

ESRB Rating
Not Rated

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Description

You are a knight flying on an ostrich, battling buzzard-mounted enemies. To fly, you repeatedly hit the flap button. To topple the Buzzard-Riders “the highest lance wins.” Two-player head-to-head play is excellent.

Each player controls a different knight and each of them rides a different mount. The first player is a yellow knight who rides on a flying ostrich. The second player is a light blue knight who rides on a giant stork.

In each wave throughout the game, you must defeat every enemy knight in a joust. Everytime you defeat an enemy knight in a joust by ramming him atop his head, he will turn into an egg. You must then capture the egg before it hatches, otherwise, the egg will hatch and the knight will become the next more-difficult character. In other words, a Bounder will become a Hunter, a Hunter will become a Shadow Lord, a Shadow Lord will become a Bounder and so on. After the egg hatches, a new mount will fly out to pick up the newly-hatched enemy knight. You can also collect an enemy knight after he has hatched before he mounts his buzzard.

Sometimes the eggs will fall into the lava pits at the bottom of the screen in later waves. During the first two waves, there are platforms at the bottom of the screen that will allow you to walk over the lava pits, but in later waves, the platforms will be burned away. Sometimes, a pterodactyl will show up in some of those waves, usually if you take too long. The only way you can kill the pterodactyl is by ramming him in the mouth to desintagrate him.

If you have your feathered mount fly too close to either of the lava pits, The Lava Troll will reach out and grab your mount by the legs and pull you both into his fiery home. If this happens, you must have your mount repeatedly flap really hard to escape from the grip of The Lava Troll. The Lava Troll will also grab the enemy knights on their buzzards and occasionally pull them in with him.

Even in the later waves, platforms will collapse and disintegrate. Occasionally, there is an Egg Wave where you must grab all the enemy eggs before they hatch. As you advance to later waves, the difficulty constantly increases.

Joust

Overview & History

Released by Williams Electronics in 1982 and designed by John Newcomer, Joust defied the standard space-shooter conventions of its era by introducing a gravity-defying fantasy arena. Eschewing traditional platforming, Newcomer envisioned a game about mounted knight combat where the mounts were giant, majestic ostriches and storks. Instead of shooting projectiles, players had to master the physics of momentum and altitude, clashing lances with rival buzzard-riding knights in a perilous, volcanic realm. The arcade cabinet became an iconic fixture in 1980s arcades, famous for its cooperative two-player mode where allies could either work together to clear waves or accidentally (or intentionally) knock each other into the boiling lava below.

Gameplay Features & Mechanics

The core mechanic of Joust revolves around aerial jousting physics. Victory is determined entirely by elevation: whoever strikes from a higher vertical position wins the collision. When a knight is defeated, they leave behind an egg that must be collected before it hatches into a more aggressive, tougher enemy variant known as a Pterodactyl. The game features endlessly looping waves of escalating difficulty, populated by Bounders, Hunters, and Shadow Lords. If a player lingers too long on a level, an invincible, fire-breathing Pterodactyl spawns to relentlessly hunt them down, adding a frantic time-limit tension to every single stage.