Joust

Coolection Verified independent store

→

Item ConditionComplete in box: the cartridge, the manual and the box, all original. Original inserts or paperwork shown in the photos are included; display stands and other photogr aphy props are not. Every cartridge's shell, label and board are checked for authenticity when it comes into the store, and it's tested before it's listed. It ships in a collector's bag or a hard plastic case.Item DescriptionFlap, climb, and come down lance-first on the other knight. Joust may have the most instantly understandable rules of the golden arcade age, and they are still hard to put down. John Newcomer designed it for Williams in 1982: you ride a flying ostrich above a pit of lava, tapping the button to beat its wings, and whenever two riders collide, the one with the higher lance wins. A defeated rider leaves behind an egg, and if you do not scoop it up quickly, it hatches into a new knight waiting for a fresh mount.The enemy riders climb in skill from the red Bounders to the gray Hunters to the fast, aggressive blue Shadow Lords. Later waves bring the pterodactyl, which only goes down to a precise hit on its weak spot, and the hand that reaches up out of the lava to drag careless riders under. Two players can fly at once, the second riding a stork, and that is where Joust becomes legendary: you can team up against the computer, or decide your partner looks an awful lot like a target.The NES version has a fascinating backstory of its own. HAL Laboratory produced it with a young Satoru Iwata as head programmer, years before he became Nintendo's president, as one of a set of arcade conversions, alongside Millipede and Defender II, that began with a failed deal for Atari to distribute the Famicom internationally. HAL eventually released the games itself in 1987. The conversion keeps the coin-op's floaty, momentum-driven handling, and Iwata's work on it is said to have informed his programming of Balloon Fight.Joust laid down the flap-and-collide formula that Nintendo's own Balloon Fight borrowed, and its two-player chaos plays as well on a couch today as it did in the arcade. It is the 1982 classic in a form you can keep under the TV, with an Iwata credit that gives it a special place in Nintendo history. Show more