That’s the theory theory, anyway. The key to Joust is learning how to keep your bird under control. There is only a single button – "flap" – which will propel your bird every so slightly into the air. With a few more presses, you take your steed higher into the sky, allowing you to stay airborne. In addition to fighting against gravity, you're also dealing with inertia. Build up enough speed and you'll find yourself careening across the arena, wrapping around the screen as you disappear off one side and reappear on the other. It’s a surefire way to make yourself dizzy until you skid to a stop.
Though this looks fun, it's also incredibly dangerous. Your enemies have one major advantage over you, and that's the fact that they have extremely solid control over their birds. The most nerve-wracking moments are those brief, split seconds where your brain tries to determine if you’re traveling at the right velocity and angle to hit someone above their lance. Do you let your fate fall into the hands of physics? Do you press the "flap" button one more time, potentially giving you the upper hand, but also maybe propelling you over and missing your target? Or worse, bumping your head on a platform, sending you downward and getting killed. Situations like this happen all the time in Joust, and they’re largely why it's so enthralling.
There are other minor elements, too. Destroyed enemies drops eggs, which you're supposed to collect for points. Left unchecked, they'll hatch into humans, which then call a new bird on the field to take its place, providing another task for you to juggle. Later stages introduce pterodactyls, which are invincible except for an incredibly tiny weak point that was only left into the game due to programmer error, and can only be exploited by truly expert players. There are also fire trolls, who grab any birds that fly too close to the lava and drag them to their death, providing they can't escape. Most amusingly, they don't distinguish between human and CPU controlled characters, and watching a hapless foe get crushed by one of its own is always good for a laugh.
There's really no doubt about it – Nintendo's Balloon Fight is a huge rip-off of Joust. It plays almost identically, except you control a kid flying with balloons, fighting against assorted enemies. Other than the stage designs, the only other major difference is that since you have two balloons, you can take two hits. It is, at least, a very good clone, and much better than the NES port of Joust. The major advancement comes with the Balloon Trip mode, which recasts the game as an auto-scrolling platformer, as you weave between obstacles and dodge enemies. This spawned its own separate game, known as Balloon Kid for the Game Boy, and Hello Kitty World for the Famicom, which is the same game but starring the cutesy Sanrio mascot.
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