Hello everyone and welcome to round 1 of the 2014 Weekly Contest Summer Tournament!  21 participants have been selected and will face off against each other in round 1 in an elimination style tournament and it all begins here.  Sir Bimmy of Double Dragon is here to challenge you all to a duel!  Grab your lances and saddle up for a rousing joust.  Ah ah ah, brave warriors, don't you mount your trusted steeds.  No horses will be allowed in this duel.  Today you will all mount the mighty and graceful...ostrich.  That's right, they're not just for making burgers out of any more.  They're for riding into battle!  So pull your heads out of the sand and put on your best Ultimate Warrior faces because you have three challenging foes to face off against.  The mighty Bounders, Hunters, and Shadow Lords are waiting in the arena and are ready to knock you from your mighty steeds...er, birds.  Just watch out for the fiery lava trolls, who are ready at a moments notice to pull you down into the fiery depths of Hell itself.  And that isn't the worst part!  You will have to contend with some totally terrifying and tubular pterodactyls that are looking to send you to an early grave.  Think you have what it takes to be the Joust champion?  Here are the rules (Please read the rules carefully for your specific tier.  Failure to play by the correct rules could result in your score being disqualified):


TIER 1

• Choose 1 Player, Game A
• Play until Life 0.  You may not play any of the game on Life 0
• Take your picture as soon as you reach Life 0
• The top 5 highest scores advance to Round 2

TIER 2
 

• Choose 1 Player, Game A
• Play until Game Over
• Take your picture on the Title Screen (Press select to see your score)
• The top 5 highest scores advance to Round 2

TIER 3
 

• Choose 1 Player, Game A
• Play until Game Over
• Take your picture on the Title Screen (Press select to see your score)
• The top 5 highest scores advance to Round 2

The contest ends Monday, 7/14/14 at 11 PM NA time.  Your user name MUST be in the picture for your score to be valid.  The entire TV screen, or computer monitor if you are playing on an emulator, MUST be in the picture for the score to be valid.  No partial screenshots will be considered or accepted.  No screenshots by hitting "print screen" on a computer will be allowed.  You must take a picture of your computer monitor.  There may be instances where this will be acceptable, but it will be at the discretion of myself and the contest organizers.  Also, the use of turbo controllers is forbidden, as well as any cheat codes, Game Genies, or save states if playing on an emulator.  Also, we will only be using NTSC systems for the contests.  The use of PAL systems will NOT be allowed.  Good luck everyone and have fun

THE CONTESTANTS

TIER 1
arch_8ngel
arnpoly
Balloon_Kid
BilltownSparty
BriGuy82
gutsman004
Vectrex280996

TIER 2
Caleb47
EgasKrad
jump_man95
LukeAF24
razeak
Thundercat08
Velinos

TIER 3
etrainstyles
fatalfuryspecial
JHAOC
mettbep
mattyjmania
renderling
tyrantrum85

 

Looking forward to it. Didn't really know what to expect with size of the tiers, etc.

I had a lot of fun with this game last year when it was in a weekly contest, so much so I bought a cartridge of it afterwards. Here's to a lot of pterodactyl deaths again

Oh yeah! I remember playing this last year! I got pretty good at it, yet I hope I'm not too rusty at it since I haven't touched it since.

EDIT: Aaaaaand it seems I have to practice some more... I just played a few rounds of Joust and I got to the 100K mark.

Oh man, Joust. I've played this one a little but I'm not so good at it ... yet! Time to raise my game!

So from past competitions what is a perspective on a "good score" for this game?

One the one hand it "feels like" Balloon Fight, but on the other hand the dynamic is fairly different (speed actually being good in this one to snatch up eggs on the fly)

I played this a few weeks ago and got a score of 119,500 by Wave 19 playing by the rules in Tier 2 & 3. If you can kill the enemies and catch the egg at the same time, you get bonus points. I wasn't very successful at doing that, so I definitely could have achieved a better score. Plus, the lava trolls pulled some of the enemies down into the lava, which cost me some points. And there's the pterodactyls. If you're successful at killing them, I believe you get 1,000 points per successful kill. I wasn't too good at killing them, so my score suffered there. My score seemed alright, but I know there's lots of room for improvement.

Ah, figured the dragons were instant-death, since I never managed to kill one and I was sure I had top-lance.

You have to be really precise with your lance on the Pterodactyls. You have to hit them on either the tip of their nose or in the mouth to kill them. I'm not very good at it, so most of the time I just avoid them.

I've never ever played this game ... But.... You're going down tier 3!!!!

Bite me, other tier 3 Matt! I may have never played this before, but I'll assuredly knock it out of the park.

ANOTHER Matt you say?!?!

Is it bad that I know this game as "The Turkey Game"

i just found out today that i am in the tournament. picked up the game on the way home. havent played this one much, but i do play a lot of balloon fight so i am hoping i can hang in there.

Love it. Joust: The Turkey Game!

Here's what I could do after a few games. By the end of the week, I should be able to cross the 200K mark. If I remember well I actually did that last year, so I should be able to pull it off this time
This picture is probably going to change. (My character is on the platform on the right, slightly off the pic)

TIER 1 - 124500

^^^ what phase?

Btw, I found a safe way to grind the dragons but it is beyond tedious. In the spirit of the competition I would say no "camping" where you just sit there indefinitely to make them spawn repeatedly.

I

294,500 (Tier-1 Wave 30 something)

This is my first time playing this game... After playing a few rounds I've already come to the conclusion that you will all be playing for second place!!!

^^^ What wave? I'm really trying to get a sense of pacing.

Hopefully I'll get some good play-time on the actual console this week since this one seems rougher with a keyboard than Balloon Kid was, for some reason.

I think it has to do with the snappier horizontal momentum of the birds versus how you could more-or-less carefully float around with the balloons.

I was somewhere in the 20's, next time I post up a score I'll get the exact wave# for you. The controls are definitely rougher than Balloon fight imo too. 

Thanks, good to know.

Is there some extra bonus on the egg waves that I'm not seeing?  

It seems like they are strictly "egg points" (250, 500, 750, 1000, 1000,... etc)

Scratch that.

It is SO tedious, and actually very high risk, so I don't think it will matter.  

(if you are good enough to point press the last guy on Wave 1 while killing Pterodactyls, you are probably better off progressing for better point ratios)

So far all the bonus points for each egg level have been the same that I've noticed. I'm not sure if that changes as you progress further...

Yeah, did a quick read and realized that the eggs will actually hatch and become jousters if you don't grab them in time.

I assumed they disappeared so always grabbed them as quickly as possible.