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In 1982, Williams decided to gamble on a unique flying/fighting game with
no fire button called Joust. John Newcomer was a young ex-toy designer
who designed the premise behind Joust, and along with artist
Jan Hendricks,
lead programmer Bill Pfutzenreuter, and the rest, the team pushed
the boundaries of the archaic, "96K" memory-limited hardware that
hosted Joust. Despite the game industry's prediction of failure,
Joust sold magnificently and captured the attention of many male & female gamers.
I play the game on the Williams' Arcade Classics disk on my Sega Saturn.
It's an exact copy of the arcade game, emulated perfectly using Digital Eclipse's emulator.
Joust has one or two players controlling a rider-mounted giant ostrich,
pressing the flap button madly to position yourslef at a higher screen
postion than enemy buzzard riders. There is no background scrolling,
instead the entire world is contained on one screen. The world's stone
clouds, some of which will dissolve on certain levels, are both
obstacles and protective retreats, and at the bottom of the screen on each
side is deadly molten lava and the Lava Troll, who will grab you (and enemies)
to pull you to a fiery demise. The (unbeatable?) Pterodactyl also shows up
from time to time to eat you and can only be defeated by an extremely accurate
poke of your lance down its throat.
Joust, with its unique, simple controls and strategic gameplay,
is one of my all time favorite games. The levels and gameplay mechanics
couldn't have been more eloquently, perfectly designed.
Jousting rules and scoring -- the highest lance wins. Defeated enemies drop
eggs which must be picked up before they hatch into deadlier enemies.
Eggs are worth 250, 500, 750, and
finally 1000 in succession, with 500 point bonus if caught in the air.
Bounders are 500 points,
Hunters are 750 points,
and Shadow Lords are worth 1500 points.
The Pterodactyl is worth 1,000 points.
You are awarded an extra mount every 20,000 points. Successfully completing
a Survival or Gladiator wave nets you 3,000 points. When you die, the eggs
revert back to their lowest value of 250 points.
My top recorded score on Joust is 179,900.
Animation -- Joust boasts excellent, colorful, fluid animation for the
lava and its Troll, the buzzards and your own ostrich, accompanied by typical
Williams sounds: bizarre, artificial sounding, and loud.
Buzzards -- Bounders
are supposedly the dumbest, followed by Hunters
and then Shadow Lords. Shadow Lords are smart and bloodthirsty,
often flying straight up and bouncing madly off the top of the screen
in their efforts to defeat you. I personally think that the easiest buzzard riders
to kill are the Hunters, because they fly more predictably and in more
controlled patterns. Bounders can be rather dangerous in later levels
because they seem to fly vertically very quickly and uncontrollably.
The Waves of Joust
Click here to read about the Waves of Joust
The Sounds of Joust
Click here for Joust Start sound
Click here for Joust Pterry sound
Click here for Joust Lava sound
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