Joust Download (1983 Arcade action Game)

In Joust, players take control of a knight with a lance who rides their flying ostrich (or stork, for Player 2) to do battle against computer-controlled evil knights who ride atop vultures.

Players must flap their steed's wings to hit the enemy from a higher jousting point to destroy the vulture and its rider. Once the enemy has been hit, an egg falls to one of the platforms below. The heroic knights must destroy the eggs before they hatch and release new and increasingly more difficult knights. The three strengths of enemy knights are Bounder (red knight), Hunter (white knight), and Shadow Lord (blue knight). These enemy knights are not the only challenge to be found in the game. Players must also contend with crumbling platforms, lava trolls who attempt to pull knights into the fire, and the dreaded "unbeatable"(?) pterodactyl.

The game was novel for its time for being one of the few two-player simultaneous games in the arcade.

Joust is a pc port of the classic arcade game. Basically you control a guy riding on an ostrich who has a lance. You repeatedly press your fly button and the ostrich flies. To kill the bad guys, who are riding buzzards, you hit into them and however is lower get knocked off. After you kill someone an egg falls down and you have to collect it before a buzzard flies in and brings the guy back to life.

I'm not going to get started about how Ostriches can't fly and this game makes no sense. It is fun. If you've played the arcade version you know what you're in for. The gameplay is exactly the same. The graphics are 4-colour CGA, so the graphics look pretty bad, but they're not bad for 1983. Pretty much all the elements are here, including the almost unbeatable Pterodactyl. The best thing about this game is that two people can play together. You can both play together and defeat the buzzards together or you can take the fun route and kill your friend (In the game of course).

The game is a pretty faithful recreation of the original. It's just as addictive to play as the original.

Joust is a faithful PC conversion of Williams' coin-op and Atari console classic done in-house by Atari as part of their "Atarisoft" brand. The objective should be familiar to everyone except those who started gaming after early 1980s: ride an ostrich around the screen as you joust-battle the enemy shadow-lords flying on their buzzards. At the same time, you must pick up the eggs before they hatch into more deadly enemies. Other dangers include a pterodactyl who periodically arrives to thin out the ranks of on-screen warriors if things are taking too long, and platforms that disappear under your feet, plunging you into a sea of molten lava. The game includes support for two players, and the 4-color CGA palette does a nice job of conveying all the frantic action and different enemies. This PC version of Joust does the game joust-ice, and brings the elegant fun of simple-to-learn-but-addictive-to-play arcade pioneers to the PC screen. Highly recommended.

How to run this game on modern Windows PC?

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