Play Joust Online

Summary

When HAL Laboratory brought the arcade classic Joust to the NES, they handed the job to a young Satoru Iwata, who would later become Nintendo’s legendary CEO. His programming kept the core feel of the original while fitting the 8‑bit constraints of the console.

The game still drops you on a yellow knight riding an ostrich, flapping the bird’s wings with rapid button presses to hover or climb, and the screen wraps horizontally so you can loop around platforms. Enemy knights on buzzards descend as eggs that you can catch for points before they hatch, and a pterodactyl swoops in for a bonus after a set time. A lava‑troll drags any low‑flying rider into the molten abyss, ending a life.

The NES version preserves the essential gameplay, but Allgame noted that several arcade extras vanished and the graphics look duller than the Atari 7800 port. Still, the familiar wave‑after‑wave challenge feels just as addictive on the home console.