I'd recommend the Retro-bit NES adapter that way you can play an actual NES controller with the emulator. It's cheap and works great.


I've honestly never really played Joust before so I'm a bit puzzled on why two enemies could be lined up and I beat the first guy and the enemy right after him beats me. Is there a technique or something I'm missing?

I'm basically just pressing A as fast as possible and trying to hit them hard.

Battle of the highest,my friend....battle of the highest. Spent lots of quarters on this game back in the day....

Ah I see so smack em in the head?

Highest lance wins,so definitely get higher than your enemies.

Yep, highest lance wins. You want to have your lance be closer to theirs without falling under so that you can grab their eggs before they touch the ground (bonus points). You don't have to be charging at them to grab the eggs immediately. As long as there is some movement toward you or them, you're fine. You can "Mario pounce" on them if you like. If you hit them just right, you'll grab the egg as well, but in most cases the eggs will likely go flying into the lava or on a platform.

I'll have to look into the adaptor in the future, though the controller is getting a bit better now (I decided to play a few more games of this, but my score didn't improve, damn Pterodactyls).  I just wanted to say as well I was just getting frustrated last night and needed to vent a little, so I hope I didn't sound too whinny, but damn, you can go from 4 lives to 0 within seconds and that just sets me off when that happens. 

Also, to reiterate what others have said, to destroy the enemies, your lance must be higher, but as I suggest to those who are new at it, it may be better to start by flying over them and landing on them before going head to head, to get a feel for the game and its controls.

One more thing, to go back to my 7800 comment, for me, it was easier with that controller, since the joystick seemed to be more fluid with the game, though my hand would get sore from that version because of the side button.  Of course, if I was playing this with a regular NES controller, it may be different, but its getting better more constantly. 

Never tried this game until today. Got around 30,000 on my third try and 60,000 after about 30 minutes of playing. The only thing that really bugs me about this game is that the pterodactyl can spawn right on top of you when you're near the edge of the screen, and you can respawn directly under an enemy. Makes for some very cheap deaths. The controls were really tough to get used to, and I'm still not comfortable with how much inertia you have when flying.

As much as I hate the Pterodactyls, I LOVE to see them drown in the lava.

I should amend my statement earlier,it's not highest lance wins but highest person wins as you can be killed by being lower than the enemy even if they are facing away from you. In my opinion,the biggest challenge is just simply controlling your ostrich. It's like it was fed a big bag of cocaine right before the competition and it's your job to keep him from literally bouncing all over the place. And yes,ptery is a big pain although I killed him once inadvertently by facing away from him and turning towards him at the last second. He died a painful death,and there was much rejoicing.

Score updated!


Mid-week score!

(crowd goes "yaaaaay" while waving flags)

Exactly. I'll post a score when I feel that it's a decent total. And does anyone else think the song at the title screen does not fit the game at all? Everytime I hear it,it reminds me of something I'd hear out of the Popeye game.

41,750

87,750


I've seen less bounce in a pinball machine. Seriously,I have no freaking clue why this game is so bouncy. Maybe it was originally supposed to be a pinball game? Either way I wanted to get at least 100k before I posted a score,but several cheap deaths prevented me from that. I will agree with everyone about the cheapness....Joust is definitely a cheap death grand champion.

My personal goal for the week was to break 150k, but it looks like it's going to take 300k+ to win. I may just have to hope my current score lands me in the top 5.

Updated my score. I was sitting on it for a while, hoping that I would get to 300,000, but it didn't work out that way.

Curious as to what system he's playing that on.

I was wondering the same thing. The video says "Joust NES", but the title screen says Atari and it's obviously not the NES version.

I was watching a youtube video showing a lot of the different versions of the game and it said the one in the video Tom posted was the NES version. If there maybe an unlicensed version or something? Similar to the way it is with Tetris?

The comments on the video seem to be in Spanish so maybe it's a version from another region. It also appears that he's playing on an emulator so it could be a hack or something considering the previous comments that he seems to be flying at an abnormally fast rate.

Well, I can't be positive if it is indeed the Famicom dump of the rom, but I just googled, downloaded, and played "Joust (J)" and it has the same bubbly, black box styled title screen as the video. 

I noticed that too. Since it looks graphically better,I figured that maybe it was from the SNES or something. Eh whatever.

My score has been updated to 89,250. I thought I had enough of this game, but its become addicting, in a train wreck sort of way.

There's only shadow lords from Wave 41 on, so there really isn't anything new to show beyond that. As far as I know, the game doesn't have an ending. Once you pass Wave 99 it goes to A0-A9, then B0 and so on. I don't know if the game has a kill screen or not since I quit at Wave B1 last night, but my guess is that it just keeps going.

I can finally concede that this is a good game, which I always suspected (how could ostrich-jousting be lame?). Last time we played it I just could not get into it because it was my first time and the learning curve is very steep.

Basically I have found I play best when I am patient before going in for the kill. The B button helps a lot too. Will post my (relatively low) score later and hopefully I can find some time to top it.

You guys (and gal) are doing really good!