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Joust

Game Mechanics

The player controls a knight equipped with a spear and mounted on a ostrich (or a stork) and the goal of the game is to eliminate all the enemies of the board before moving to the next "wave". The joystick allows to direct the mount while repeated support on the button makes it beat the wings and take altitude, each pressure on the button giving a "smoke of wing". When contacting an enemy, it is the knight who is the highest in height who wins it - equality returns the two knights back to back. The play area is represented in profile and is fully displayed on the screen: when a protagonist comes out of the frame, it reappears on the opposite side. The decor presents some suspended platforms, on which the frame can arise, and which hold a tactical role during the fighting. The base of the table is gradually submerged by a deadly lava lake. As far as levels are concerned, waves of enemies are more intense and the number of platforms decreases. The top edge of the screen is a very advantageous position as the player can win all his duels; but this is not materialized compared to the rest of the display area (in "black on black background"). A shot of too soon made to "rebound" the player against the ceiling and push it violently down, involving a good estimate of the upper limit of the game.

The enemy knights move on the back of nozzles: there are three kinds of knights, with more or less elaborate behaviors. Each defeated enemy reveals a 'uf who falls and bounces on the platforms and who can finish his motion still on the ground or fall into the lava. Catching a 'uf that hasn't hit the ground yet offers a bonus of 250 points. If the egg lands unharmed and is not collected in time, a new top-powered knight in a hatch and a mount comes to pick it up to put it into play (the knight standing but without a mount can still be picked up as a 'uf). The players are eliminated as soon as they lose a duel.

When the rims prolong and in advanced levels, the pterodactyl appear. These are agile flying reptiles that can be destroyed by a precise spear in it, but their removal is not required to finish the level. There is also a troll whose giant hand rises to catch the knights that fly too close to the lava: the player releases his mount by pressing the button quickly and can take advantage of the immobilization of an enemy in such difficulty to destroy it.

The game offers a two-player mode playing both in cooperation and in competition. The co-operation feature, still rarely encountered at the time, would have inspired Shigeru Miyamoto for Mario Bros., great classic of 1983, and constitutes an interesting case in the study of video game as a conflict system. Players own their own points counter; they can kill themselves in a bad way even if they collaborate, and the game encourages them sometimes to collaboration, sometimes to competition by awarding bonus points. Some waves contain specific optional goals: to raise bonuses, the player must pick up the maximum amount of eggs before they hatch during a Egg Wave, do not lose any life during a Survival Wave, don't kill yourself during one Team Wave and be the first to kill the other player during one Gladiator Wave. However, it is never necessary to kill the other player to finish a level of this guy.

Special levels Gladiator Wave and Team Wave does not appear if a player is the only player when the game advances the levels sequence.

A second player (both player 1 or player 2) can join the game at any time; the abilities of the two players being fixed and they receiving a life every 10,000 points, there is no particular malus to join an already engaged part, except the largest number of enemies.