PixlBit

Joust was awesome. I had the Atari 8-bit version of it at home. My sister would play it from time to time. Unfortunately, most of Midway/Williams's pre-Mortal Kombat arcade library has fallen into obscurity now because Warner Bros, which now owns Midway IPs doesn't seem interested in it. We haven't seen a compilation of their games released in almost ten years, when they released a collection for PS3 and 360.  Arcade Archives did great at bringing Nintendo's library to Switch, but they only publish Japanese arcade games and not American games.

So I've contented myself with getting my Joust fix through Balloon Fight and Vs. Balloon Fight on Switch. Balloon Fight was Satoru Iwata's first game. He also handled the NES version of Joust, which was published by HAL.

You know, I've never played Balloon Fight. 

It's too bad Joust has been forgotten. It's a great game, and the world always tickled my imagination. 

Mine too. It was a great game and was cool when you beat the pterodactyl.

When Joust was presented to Williams brass, they were like "WTF is this? What's this flap buttom for?" Nintendo of America said the same thing about the Jump button on Donkey Kong. Back then, they really wanted more shooting games. Both DK and Joust were huge successes. 

Ironically, when Donkey Kong became popular, Atari licensed Kangaroo from Sunsoft because they wanted a platformer to compete with DK, prioritizing a release of Kangaroo over Gravitar, which was a vector shooting game developed in-house at Atari. The developers of Gravitar were upset and sent out a company-wide memo calling Kangaroo "trash." Kangaroo went on to become a decent-sized hit, while Gravitar was a bomba. 

I would play Kangaroo with an onion tied to my belt, which was the style at the time.

I loved Joust in the arcade!  It's one of my favorites as well.  I didn't have a 2600 as a kid, but I did have a 5200 and I had Joust on it.  It was one of my most played games on the 5200 alongside Pengo and River Raid.

On one of the early Midway collections, they put in Joust 2!  I didn't even know Joust 2 existed until that collection.  I've never seen it in an arcade.  If I saw it in an arcade as a kid, I would've freaked out!  Have you ever seen it or played it?

Only other game I know of that plays like Joust is Balloon Fight.  Andrew mentioned this before, but Balloon Fight was made by Satoru Iwata, former president of Nintendo and HAL Labs.  But sorry Iwata up in Heaven, but I still like Joust better.  I read somewhere that to get the hang of programming for the NES, Iwata made arcade games like Defender 2 and Joust.  Later on these were actually published by HAL for the NES!

Here's an interesting video I watched recently about Joust.

I have definitely never heard of Joust 2. I will have to check that out!

I'd totally play that. 

I remember Joust 2 from Midway Arcade Treasures 1 on PS2 and Gamecube. That was the best Midway collection we ever got. Now WB won't even touch Midway's old catalogue.

Joust was great. You know that movie Rollerball? It should've been the Joust movie. Also, every other video game movie should've been a Joust movie. 

You really had to mash the buttons in the arcade to keep flying. I liked arcade games that made me work like Marble Madness. 

I would totally watch a Joust movie. 

I was always really impressed with the physics of Joust, and the art of controlling the bird in the air. It was really capable of such subtlety and you could really master it, even if you had to continue pressing it over and over. 

It was an athletic game.