125 · JOUST

• In the future well beyond our knowledge, the knights of hyperspace are playing their version of JOUST!
• Introductions
• Overview
  • In Joust, players take control of a knight with a lance who rides their flying ostrich to do battle against computer-controlled evil knights who ride atop vultures.
• Gameplay
  • Ever feel like you’re playing a game the wrong way?
  • Fast and Stiff at the same time?
  • Did Balloon Fight eat Joust’s lunch?
  • The lore is so much cooler than the execution
• Development
  • Lots of Development bullshit, like who cares? He studied what can fly and mythology.
  • Joust was programmed on the NES by Iwata
  • At the time Joust was done I was hoping to get a broader audience who may want to try a different skill. There were already plenty of shooting games they could play. I wanted to break some new ground. I felt I was already giving the player new things to do like having to flap, run and become so adept at flying that it would be the determining factor in how you collided and defeated an enemy. The cleanest thing I could think of to visually determine a winner was height. - John Newcomer
• Sequels and Spinoffs
  • Joust 2: Survival of the Fittest
  • Joust 3D - Cancelled N64 Game
  • Midway Games optioned Joust's movie rights to CP Productions in 2007.
    • "Gladiator meets Mad Max", set 25 years in the future, and Peters commented that the action oriented film would appeal to a general audience. The movie was planned as a tent-pole movie, with a graphic novel by Steven-Elliot Altman as part of the media franchise's release.
• EGL
• Next week - MagMax

Auto-generated transcript. Each paragraph starts with its timestamp. Speakers are not identified.

00:00 In the future, well beyond our knowledge, the Knights of Hyperspace are playing their version of Joust.

00:21 And welcome to NEStalgia, a chronological exploration of every NES game released in North America. I'm Mike. I'm Sean. And I'm Joe. And I don't know about you guys, but that was a pretty appetizing start if we're just going off the back of the box. Like, I'd be hyped to play Joust if I just read that. I mean, they have their own futuristic version of something that we don't have at all. It sounds wonderful. Yeah, it's like a little bit of future and past all in one. What's funny is, is like, I get that they were saying like their version of Joust, that thing that like happened in medieval times, but it also sounds like they might have their own future version of this same video game that's way better.

01:05 Right. Because they call it Joust, right? They say this is a new version of Joust. Yes. They don't call it Jousting. Like, it's not called Joust. Yeah, that's sort of what I meant. That's sort of what I meant. Like, you know, I didn't know that it had like another sporting term. I thought it was just the act of, you know, the little stick, you know, or, you know, it's a long stick.

01:24 Right. Whatever. So which one of you feels most equipped to explain like medieval Joust to our audience? I could really only say what I've seen in the Heath Ledger film, A Knight's Tale. That would be perfect. Please. And if that's sort of what it is, then it was, you know, basically two guys with armor would get on horsies and there'd be this long fence, you know, maybe a hundred yards. I'm not sure if it was standardized.

01:52 Like a lance, right? Is that what it is? No, no. He's talking about the fence. A long fence that they would get on each side of facing opposite directions. And they had a very long stick that one might call a lance possibly. And they try and knock each other off the horses. And I imagine a lot of people got hurt that way.

02:13 But that's pretty much what I think if you win, if you win, then like you get a, you know, a deed to a, you know, like a piece of property. I'm not sure. That checks out with everything I know about jousting. You know, and then to summarize, in Joust, the NES game, which is just a port of the arcade game, you are a knight with a lance who rides a flying ostrich. So that's a little different than the horse. But you, while you're doing this, since it's 2D, there's no like fence against another character.

02:50 Instead, you just have to like bop the heads of the other knights who are controlling these vultures. They're not ostriches. They're vultures. And there's varying degrees of different types of enemies. But long story short, I mean, if you've played Balloon Fight, you've played Joust. I think it's more like if you've played Joust and you've played Balloon Fight. So I think that's a good point, Sean, because one thing I want to get out of the way is Joust came first. But Balloon Fight's been on the NES now for three years. So is it like, did Balloon Fight eat Joust's lunch here? Is there any reason to have both? I think so. I think they're, I mean, yeah, they have very similar, they have very similar elements.

03:34 But I still think they're different games. And so did Balloon Fight do better than Joust, at least on the NES? Because before this podcast, I had heard of Joust. I had never heard of Balloon Fight. So the long story short there is that, yes, Balloon Fight did better on the NES, most likely because it was a Nintendo marketed game. But Joust was a huge success in the arcade. So that's probably why you know of Joust more than you would ever know of Balloon Fight. Because Balloon Fight, other than Balloon Kid, which was a Game Boy game that like probably nobody really knows about, there was no like continuing line of like Balloon Fight being a Nintendo franchise.

04:12 Gotcha. To start off with the gameplay here, you guys ever like feel like you're playing a video game the wrong way? Like you've read the instructions manual, you're playing the game the way that you understand it. And you can't help but feel like you're fighting the way that the game actually wants you to play it. That was my experience with Joust.

04:32 Yeah. You mean a little bit about like the controls are deliberately floaty, but like sometimes that feels like it's a little bit hindering to the experience or because that's kind of how I felt at least off the bat until I started to get used to it where I started to appreciate it a little more. But it does feel like even when you're on the ground, the controls are so floaty that it feels like you're not quite like your inputs at first don't feel like they're quite matching up to what you're seeing your space ostrich do.

05:00 Well, I've just never played a game that feels fast and stiff at the same time. Like my ostrich just goes very far very quickly, but I have very little control over the actual like maneuvers that I'm going to do unless I set them out from the outright. And so a lot of times what I would find myself is just like in this cave structure that you're fighting across these other, you know, the other vultures on this cave structure. I was basically a pinball and all of the different cave parts were just bumpers. And I was just bumping along on them and bumping into other vultures. And it seemed like they always had the high ground on me, even in a tie, they win. So I was very bad at this game.

05:45 I mean, I was definitely bad at too, but I do think the more I think about it, that that that like stiffness, but speed at the same time and like that kind of contradicting itself was a deliberate choice to make it. I think they wanted it to feel like that. I, at least that's the only reason I could think of why it feels like that. Cause it feels like you really get this momentum. And when I feel like if you're really good at this game, it could feel really cool. It's just the design principles are that the design principles here are more or less the same as in balloon fight. And you guys loved that, uh, but that's, it's faster than balloon fight. So you have to, you have to be a little bit more precise in this game.

06:23 Um, but yeah, obviously like, I don't think that the, I think that it was an intentional design the way it's controlled, but I wouldn't describe it as floaty and stiff simultaneously. I said fast and stiff. Heavily, I would say it's heavily momentum based.

06:40 Yeah. And, and to be clear, the balloon fight thing, uh, see, that's what, that's why I say like, you ever feel like you're playing a game the wrong way because balloon fight, I didn't even need to read the manual. And I have complete control over my character in that game. And I actually consider myself quite good at that game. In joust, I don't think joust controls like balloon fight at all.

06:57 I don't find the, the rapid presses of the a button to be, uh, you know, indicating of momentum, you know, in the same process that balloon fight did, because I found myself to be just leaping across the screens very quickly and without control to like change my direction in balloon fight. You're, you're much more floaty. And in this game, I don't think I can fly for very long before I just bump into something or something attacks me. That's interesting.

07:25 Yeah. I mean, Sean, what you said is kind of what I was getting at. Whereas like at first when I booted this on, it did feel like it was a little frustrating with the stiffness, but as I kind of got through it, I was like, oh, I guess I kind of see like this is, this is meant to be this way. It's supposed to feel this way. So you could feel like you're gaining momentum and you have to kind of work around those physics. I guess my, my, my, my complaint is I wouldn't say there's stiffness at all.

07:52 And it's like, I guess I just have a problem with describing it as stiff. Okay. So here's to make the stiff sound a little better. Okay. In balloon fight, when you have enough momentum to go in a certain direction, right? It, you drift across the screen at like a constant arc in this game.

08:11 If you start off in one direction, it is very hard to change your direction the other way. In my opinion, I think that, I think that you're locked into your options. Yes, but it's not, it's not so fluid and it requires, it's not as simple as like, you know how we had the A button in balloon fight was for wrap. You know, you had to do that manually and then you could hold down B for your. Yeah. It's the same. It's the same with Jeff. So I think what might, what might be happening here is like, just where I think we might have different ideas of what, what we mean by stiff.

08:42 Cause like, like now that you're saying it, like we do describe things that are very different than this as stiff sometimes where it's like you jump and you can't move while you're in the air. There's a lot of those on like early NES games where like when you jump, it's like, oh, you're stuck into that input right now. And like, that's like one kind of stiff I think we talk about. And here, at least the way I'm interpreting it, the way I like stiff as in like, yeah, there's a lot of resistance at the, at the beginning of your, of your, you know, your motion. No, you're absolutely right. That's what I'm arguing. So like, maybe it's just like a different, different, like semantically we're thinking of stiff in different ways.

09:17 Okay. Yes. I would, I would agree with Sean's assessment that the game is say just as floaty as balloon fight. It's just not as effortless or as seamless as balloon fight makes it. There's a, there's a lot working against me here. I feel like when I'm playing joust, it's, it's almost like playing against me. Whereas in balloon fight, and this might also have to do with just the stage layout. I think joust just feels more cramped in balloon fight. I felt like I could, you know, I had more space to go around the screen in, in joust, the level layout doesn't give me a lot of options considering the number of vultures that are also on the screen.

09:52 I think the difference is that joust is trying to get you to be much more thoughtful and into what, like how fast, in what direction, how high you go. Like you want, they want you to be a bit more precise than what you're doing in balloon fight. Where I think you have a lot more freedom to correct yourself. I think that's a great assessment. Yeah. So you're, you're almost recommending to someone like me who feels like they're playing the game wrong, that they just, they kind of need to just slow down. I mean, I guess so. Yeah. I think that they're different. It's a different play style, even though it's, it's pretty much the same, uh, the same

10:31 basic control scheme. Right. But I think that's a good tip. Like, I think if you're someone like me who didn't find it enjoyable for the reasons that you found balloon fight, it might just be that you're trying to play this the same way you played that other game. Whereas one is clearly just inspired from the other. Yeah. I mean, yeah, I would say that.

10:49 Yeah. I think, I was just going to say, I think that it, it does kind of fit into this category of, um, of like arcade game that, that can be very frustrating if you're not experienced in playing it or don't know how to play it or just pick it up for the first time, but very fun once you're like, really like understand the physics and how to, how to, um, how to maneuver. It has a high skill ceiling. Yes. Yeah, exactly.

11:14 Yeah. Which is interesting because I think like most are most good arcade games lane, lend themselves to having a, a high skill ceiling. It's just that with, with other arcade games that we're used to speed, isn't necessarily something that's involved. Like in Pac-Man, you can't control the speed in space invaders. You're locked to a certain direction. Same thing with, uh, Galaga and Galaxian. So I think Joust is that first attempt at like mixing and platforming right into, into an arcade game. Uh, you know, I guess like Donkey Kong is technically a platformer too, but again, you can't really control your speed there. So I think this is an interesting example of a different type of arcade game than we're used to. Yeah.

11:53 I imagine if, uh, you could play faster in Pac-Man, I'm sure that would completely change how, like, you know, how King of Kong went. Right, right. I imagine now just like a, like a, on an arcade machine, a separate like gears, uh, joystick for you to like change your gears in Pac-Man. Yeah. I love the idea of like, you can like drift and you get like momentum and you can.

12:19 And one thing that we have to talk about too, because we've been comparing them so much is that, uh, the NES version of Joust was also programmed by Satoru Iwata, who was the same programmer of Balloon Fight. And so I think that's really funny that he programmed both games, but chose to keep Joust faithful to the arcade version rather than just like taking his Balloon Fight engine and bringing it into Joust. I think it probably only needed some, I mean, I, I, this is, this is just me guessing, but I'm sure it's like only needed a couple variables tweaked.

12:54 And what did you guys think about, like, we always talk about this with arcade games and I didn't care about the score here, but how did you feel about as the waves went on, the difficulty of the game? It definitely ramps up pretty quickly when you only have the four to keep track of. Um, uh, even though you may be pinballing because you're used to, uh, balloon fight or you're just not sure like how to modulate your speed.

13:21 Um, you can still pretty much get through it. Uh, and then once it starts adding more and if you are too slow and, and get the dragon boy, um, it starts to get really difficult, really fast. Yeah. Especially because I think that like add, like the more that they add ramps up the difficulty, like even more exponentially because when you, when you hit one of the, what are they? The vultures, they, they drop an egg.

13:46 And if you, as long as you get to it in time, it won't hatch into a new rider and turn into a new enemy altogether. But if, uh, but with the more eggs that there are on screen, just the more likely you get to miss some. And then it just keeps adding more vultures, you know? So it makes it a little harder to like, to really like clean up the whole screen if there's always like that threat of more appearing.

14:06 And then over the course of just the first two levels, um, you get a little walkway on the bottom that you can, uh, it's sort of like your, your, uh, bumpers if you're playing bowling, um, that they just take away, uh, for level three. And it pretty much just stays steady, like a steady level of difficulty after that point. Yeah. And those, those bumpers, just for anyone who hasn't seen it, they're, they're blocking you from falling into pits of lava on either end of the screen. So once those are gone, it makes it a little more, uh, precarious. Yeah. The floor actually becomes lava, which is quite scary. Right. Well, I think this is where that game came from. The floor is lava. I think it came from Joust.

14:50 True. And, you know, I, I will appreciate that the idea of like the bumpers being there. Like, I think that was a great analogy there, Sean, because that was very important to like continue to strip away things to add difficulty. Like I thought that was pretty neat. I almost wonder if there's another version of that where there aren't so many platforms at first so that you can explore a little more and then you go like deeper into the cave and more platforms kind of appear to block your way as you go on through the different waves. I thought something like that would have been a nice touch as well, you know, in terms of learning the game. It's funny that you say like going deeper into the cave, uh, because what I liked about,

15:29 um, at least in the manual or just the extraneous information in this game, it's sort of, it's sort of framed more as just like an arena based sport. So it's just different variations on an arena. And it's not like you're going on an adventure anywhere. It's just like, this is, this is just what you do. So it's not like you're going deeper into a cave. It's just they're, they're moving goalposts. Yeah. I mean, I totally, I totally came up with that cave analogy on my own. There's no, there, this doesn't take place in a cave. I think it actually takes place, you know, I don't want to say like on a moon, but like it says in space, in hyperspace or something. Oh yeah. Hyperspace.

16:12 This is what hyperspace looks like. Right. The lore of Joust is pretty cool. Like it's pretty metal and it's a shame that they couldn't translate that better using NES graphics. But like the idea of Knights of hyperspace playing their version of Joust on like these space mechanical robot ostriches is like, I don't know. That's some pretty cool stuff right there. And, you know, we, we don't really get to see that fully fleshed out on here. You wouldn't know that, you know, like, unless you look at like additional artwork, you wouldn't know that the ostriches are robots anyway. Yeah. And even the names of some of the, uh, the, the people you fight the enemies, there's like the buzzard riders.

17:09 And, uh, there was, there was another thing of like one of the Knights had like a really cool name too. Uh, I forgot the name. Yeah. It was very menacing. Yeah. A lot of these things are cool. And so I definitely think like they, they put in, oh yeah, here's another thing. Shadow Lord, the bounder, the hunter, like they put some thought into this stuff. So I do appreciate that. I think the only difference, uh, between the types of enemies is just like how aggressive they are. Um, and they have like their little jockey is a different, is a different color.

17:44 True. Yeah. I guess I was actually just gonna ask like what, if you guys noticed or like in the moment really noticed like which ones were which or anything, I guess, I guess some of them would be more aggressive, but it's not like any took like two hits to die or anything like that. Yeah. Some of them are just a bit more, uh, likely to get ahead of like get above you so that if you were to make contact, they would have the advantage. Right. Yeah. I mean, it just comes down to what the manual says, you know, the bounders, they're the least fearsome, the shadow Lord, most fearsome.

18:17 It's pretty funny. Uh, pretty funny stuff. I like when you look at the manual and they give you some kind of extra lore though. I just kind of wish we saw that in the game a little more. Yeah. Like a, like a fearsome, like how fearsome can it be? Yes. Agreed.

18:32 Any, anything else that I'm, I'm leaving off here? I don't want to sell the game short because it's definitely, it can be fun. And it was a like highly selling arcade game and NES game, but there's not too much to talk about. I think one other thing I want to mention is the, is the pterodactyl. Okay. Which is a, a mechanic we've seen in a lot of games where if you're, if you're just, if you're, if the round is going on for too long, this pterodactyl comes in from the left or from the right and just flies across and we'll just keep coming in as a, as a much, as a not, I wouldn't say much more difficult, but a very difficult obstacle. It's, it's always kind of keeping you moving.

19:12 And I get the, like the thought behind it. And I, and maybe this is just my personal preference, but I never really cared for that mechanic. I never felt like in this game, like, like I was going to like really like cheat it and make it go on forever. And keep like, it felt like I was always in danger and always trying to grab something. And there were even sometimes where I felt like it was like me versus the last guy on the screen. And it felt like it was going to be like a cool match of like a cool matchup of like me trying to read with using these physics to try and reach them and whatever. And, and then it just felt like this pterodactyl thing just like makes it like more of a, I don't know.

19:43 Like it felt weird to have a time limit for that reason. Because like, because in the, in the manual, it says like to keep the game from going into an endless loop. And I never felt like there was really much of a threat of this game going into an endless loop. Like, I feel like there's so much danger already.

19:56 You know, it's funny. I don't know what you guys thought. Yeah. I was going to say, it's funny that the manual contradicts what I was just about to say, because I was going to help like add to the lore of, you know, according to Sean, and if the whole thing takes place in this like arena style thing where you are, you know, almost in a sporting event, then it is kind of cool that there's this added element of like a pterodactyl that, you know, makes sense in, in this world that would come out and make things harder. The longer the game goes on, it just feels like another stipulation of their rule.

20:26 I guess that would make sense if you think about like, but they're saying, no, they're saying gladiator pit where they release a lion or something, but at least that gives it like story reason to exist. But I just think as a gameplay mechanic, at least personally, I feel like unless it's a game where you really need something like that, like, I don't know if it really adds too much to me. For me. So here's, here's a couple of reasons why I'm okay with the pterodactyl.

20:47 One, the, the nature of respawning in this game, uh, it's super quick. Uh, the, it keeps going on without you. It's not like the, the board resets or anything. Uh, you usually have a good amount of lives because it is very generous with extra lives with your score. And two, you can defeat it.

21:08 I learned just like randomly that if you're pretty much just standing still or just moving very slowly in the opposite direction that, and if it hits you, it just dies. Like if you're just going at it, like if you go. No, no, no. You, you can't be going at it. You have to be facing in the opposite direction. Oh, like going away from it. Like either moving very slowly away from it or just facing away from it and standing still. And so I was able to get rid of this thing pretty often. I mean, it still got me. Yeah. I mean, is that like a intentional?

21:44 Yeah. It's, it's a, like they, they allude to the fact that there is a way to defeat it. Um, it's a little counterintuitive and that's why they like make it like seem like this weird mystery. It says in the manual, you cannot fight and win with him. But so that makes me feel like Sean's thing was like, you know, because he, as he said, it's counterintuitive. It is almost like a mistake left in the game, you know? No, no, no, no. So in some, I don't know if it's on a different page of the manual or if it's like, uh, it's somewhere in the literature for the game that the thing is defeat. You can kill it.

22:19 Huh? That's crazy. I'm actually still trying to wrap my head around what, what you're saying with facing away from it or facing opposite direction of it literally as like back to back with it.

22:29 No, like just like if it's coming from behind you, don't turn around towards it. I don't have, I don't have the same direction as it. I don't have this knowledge like in my head. I literally had to look this up because it was bothering me, but the pterodactyl was designed to prevent players from idling, which we've been talking about and be difficult to defeat, but it is possible to defeat because it is vulnerable when it opens its mouth during a specific animation frame and quickly flies upward at the last moment when approaching a player waiting at the edge of a platform.

23:00 I mean, every time that I just turned around, it died. That's funny. Maybe it was completely at random that it was doing that animation every time. It says that the game prioritizes its graphic processing to favor the player character over the enemies. So maybe like because you were talking about your back being turned to it and then as it got closer to you turning towards it, that it just like despawned it in a way, but like No, I never turn towards it. You just stay facing away from it. That's so bizarre. Yeah, that I don't know about, but I solved one mystery at least. Now there are two confirmed ways to take down a pterodactyl.

23:43 You know, Sean, since you brought up this arena thing, that's got me thinking a lot more about just like the sporting aspect of this. If it is just you as a knight against all of these buzzards, I don't find this game to be very fair in terms of a sport. It's not really like a one-on-one joust. It's more like a gauntlet of you being like subjected. You know, I think Joe said the Coliseum with the lion and stuff like that. You're just kind of being subjected to rounds of torture. I wouldn't say it's like a sporting event. I mean, that's why you have to you're going to talk to whatever like players association

24:20 future jousting has in hyperspace. Like if they don't have collective bargaining, then it's always going to be like this. That's true. And maybe that opens up like a different idea for a another version of joust. That's like 10 players all at the same time and everybody's their own knight. And they just like, you know, it's like a party mode where only one can leave the arena. Yeah, I'd play it. I think that's kind of fun.

24:47 Okay. Well, you know, I was looking into development for this game and usually with development, we find some pretty good bullshit, right? Yeah, for sure. So I found so much garbage about about the development of this game. It was just I was reading it and I was trying to think about like, what can I take away from this for people to like understand John Newcomer, who was the creator of Joust? Like, what could I what could I get from him? What kind of quote?

25:16 I thought you were just like using like John Doe. No, no, John Newcomer is his real name. And okay, you're reading that you're reading this development stuff online. And I'm like, who cares? It's like he studied what can fly and mythology. And it's like, anybody could have done that. You know, like that actually doesn't mean anything in terms of his gameplay philosophy. So I did find one quote that I'm going to read if you guys will allow me to.

25:45 I'll allow it. Yeah, I'll allow it. Okay. This is directly from John. At the time Joust was done, I was hoping to get a broader audience who may want to try a different skill.

25:58 There were already plenty of shooting games they could play. I wanted to break some new ground. I felt I was already giving the players new things to do, like having to flap, run, and become so adept at flying that it would be the determining factor in how you collided and defeated an enemy. The cleanest thing I could think of to visually determine a winner was height. I mean, if this is a world where balloon fight doesn't exist yet, this is a new way of looking at it. So I can kind of give him the benefit of the doubt here that he's not just going to say what birds there were in books.

26:42 Which is something he said. Except this. Yeah. And I think it makes sense that the point of this game is your motion and your position, so you didn't want to muddy it up with adding a stab button or something. Yeah. Would you guys have wanted a stab button, though? Let's pretend that it would have worked out. Do you think it's just better to bop people on their heads to determine the winner, or do you think they should have tried to get the lance in there?

27:09 I think you guys would be much more pissed off at this game if you had to press a button to kill, and there'd be a bunch of like, well, I definitely hit the button, but it always won. I would just be pissed to control two buttons at the same time, too. Like, you have to flap pretty much all the time, so I'd hate to have to flap and then also hit a button to launch my lance forward, so I'm not for that option.

27:35 Yeah. I also think it might get a little, just with the graphics that are here and everything, it might get a little complicated to be like, well, so then do they have to stab you, too? And then there might be a lot of like, I definitely hit him first, like, oh, he hit me. It's hard to see who was stabbing, and, you know, I think this is just, it's much, much more obvious, like, yep, I won because I was above him. Yeah, there's going to come a point where we just basically turn Joust into a shmup at that point, you know? No. Yeah, like the lances just get thrown like javelins.

28:05 I don't want to play Joust shmup. You probably want to play more Joust, though, right? I mean, I like Joust. Yeah, so let me tell you about some other Joust games, okay, because there are two.

28:21 Okay. All right. The first one, Joust 2, Survival of the Fittest. And what's different about this one? You know, I try, one thing is that the graphics are better, way better, but there's, it just seems to be other than like added enemies and, yeah, added enemies. Like, I think there's a, there's a griffin now and there's these knights that are actually like on the platforms that have their own lances and they seem to be in the way.

28:48 Other than that, I couldn't really tell if there was actually like a new, like a new element for the player. Okay. But I believe... It's just like a much more treacherous place to hold a sporting event. Yes. And the layout changes too with each stage that you clear. So like the platform, the way the platforms lay out, it's not like things get stripped. It's like you just go to a new place.

29:10 Okay. And then there's Joust 3D, the canceled N64 game, which, you know, I'm going to try and share it real fast with you guys here, but I can tell you right now that Joust would not translate well to 3D. I don't even want to see it on PS5, you know? Yeah. I was going to say, I feel like maybe, maybe many years after the N64 days, it might have an easier time, but I think it'd be tough. This looks like, I don't know, like the Panzer Dragoon or something. It seems like they tried to make it into like an RPG, right?

29:45 Whereas it would have just been better as like, I could understand like, this would be a better 3D game to use with like a lance, you know? Like if you had to... This is like a huge environment too. It looks better than what I expected, which was like some kind of Bubsy 3D thing, but I don't know if I would have wanted to play. There is still hope for Joust though, because Midway Games optioned the rights to the Joust movie to... They did it to CP Productions back in 2007. And it was described as Gladiator meets Mad Max, set 25 years in the future.

30:22 I don't know why that was important. Like only 25 years in the future. We'll have hyperspace back then. When was this? 2007. So Gladiator meets Mad Max is kind of interesting because Gladiator was like a best picture. That's basically just Mad Max Thunderdome though. Like you don't need to mix it with anything. Right. Peters, who I don't know who that is, but he's the guy who commented on this quote. He said that the action oriented film would appeal to a general audience and that the movie was going to be a tentpole movie. You couldn't say more generic things. Like we're going to appeal to a wide audience and this is going to be a blockbuster. It's going to start Dennis Quaid.

31:07 I can see that. And it was even, it even had a graphic novel in the works too, as part of the media franchise's release. So I think that's... Oh man, I wonder what happened to Joust. Well, you know what's funny there, Sean, is I couldn't help but think about this as I was gathering this together, that this is a lot like what we talked about in the Ghostbusters

31:26 episode that you mentioned. Like, you know, these things are just planned in advance for all these movies. Like they get together the book deals, the toys, like they just plan for these movies to be giant successes regardless when there's enough money behind them. But Joust was never made with the idea that there would be a movie later. I mean, that's different. I don't know. He was studying a lot about birds. Maybe he was studying movies too.

31:52 He was reading how to make a movie. That's true. It's just pictures. Yep. It's just pictures at the end of the day. The only thing we really do on this podcast that's meaningful is the Essential Games list. So I think we should do it right now.

32:09 All right. And we're back from that very quick music sting. You're probably wondering why I even segue between the two. It's it's I should stop using the song altogether and just say let's vote. But with that. No, I like I like the rhythm of it. OK, that's good. I'm glad that somebody appreciates it. So, Sean, since you like it, will you also vote first for us? I know that this is not going to be an essential game. I enjoyed it enough. I'm not even sure if it lives up to my standards for what an essential game should be.

32:40 But I enjoyed this more than Balloon Fight and Balloon Fight's on the essential games list. So by that logic, I'm going to vote for it with the understanding that it's going to lose in the end. Are you allowed to manipulate the vote like that?

32:54 Are you allowed to like meta vote on the essential? No, no, no, no. I can vote however I want. I'm just saying that I know you guys are not going to vote it on. Well, what's funny is there's nothing stopping me and Joe from being like, well, we'll show him and just go and vote it on him. But that's his plan. If you want to be petty with the essential games list, go right ahead. That's his plan. He knows how petty we are. He's trying to get it on the essential games list. Sean, you don't need to appease the Joust fans out there and put it on the essential games list. No, I'm appeasing myself. And that's the only person I need to appease. May I take my vote?

33:28 So, Sean, I don't want there to be misunderstanding that I dislike this game. I do like this game. I did initially have issues with it. But the more I got used to it, the more I got the hang of it, I see why it's a fun game. And I think if I were to get really good at it, I would... You see why it's fun. You don't think it's fun. I didn't think it was fun at the beginning. But as I played it more, I see why people find it fun. And I think if I got better at it, I would find it pretty fun. But I think for me, it suffers from a lot of things that arcade games like this suffer from. Where it just, to me, just gets repetitive after a while.

34:05 It's, I don't know, it doesn't hold my attention for long enough that I think that it's a must play. And I personally liked Balloon Fight more. And I didn't vote Balloon Fight onto the essential games list. So, using the same logic, I will have to not vote it on. You know, by all of this logic, it seems like I'm going to have to re-listen to that Balloon Fight episode. Because I might have just put it on the essential games list myself at this point. Like, you didn't vote for it. Sean didn't vote for it. No, Sean did vote for it. I think I voted for it, didn't I? Sorry, I thought you said that you didn't.

34:36 But, okay. Let's get back on topic. Not about Balloon Fight, but Joust. I feel like I need to explain myself here. I have a bullet... You don't need to explain. I have a bullet point in my notes here that says, Ever feel like you're playing a game the wrong way? And I tried to direct that conversation there. I don't think Joust is a bad game at all. I think I was playing it wrong.

34:59 And I think we solved that here on the show. But I don't think I'm going to, like, magically go back to my NES and discover, like, Oh, yeah, if you play slow, this game is so much more fun. Like, I don't think I'm going to uncover that either. But my complaints with Joust were mostly on, like, a me level. Like, something about this game that took a formula that I clearly liked enough about Balloon Fight to put it on the Essential Games list. And I actually would... I would still fight for Balloon Fight to this day.

35:27 You know, so I think there's something about Joust that's just... It's not quite cutting it for me. And I think it has to do with that fast and stiff approach that I was talking about. But I will definitely try it again and play it slower and just more methodical, maybe. And see if that changes my opinion of it. See if I can make it more into Balloon Fight. But then that asks the question, should I really be playing Joust if I'm just trying to make it, like, Balloon Fight? So it's not an essential game to me.

35:59 I do think it's a good game. And I can understand why some would say it's a great game. I do think it's weird that we have an arcade game here that so many people talk about. And that is really well-liked. But has very few sequels. And Midway just kind of, like, said, eh, screw it with the rest of Joust's future. Eh, it's Midway.

36:19 They don't make good decisions. There you go. That's going to be their new company slogan. I don't think Midway exists anymore. I don't think so. I don't think so either. But I don't think Midway... Ever existed. Well, no. There's, like, Midway-Bally, right? Is that a thing? Or did they get acquired too? Like, didn't they combine at one point? Valley-Midway? I'm almost positive that Midway made bad decisions into their financial grave. That probably checks out. Because just a quick Google search of Midway-Bally says net income negative $191 million. Yep. So that must have been a really bad decision for them. Yeah, they went defunct in 2010. And I wonder who got their assets, actually. But we'll see.

37:08 Someday Joust will come back. I guarantee it. All video games will eventually be remade. Including Mylon's Secret Castle. No. You don't want Mylon's Secret Castle open world? Oh, now that's open world, yes. Yeah, that's the answer to everything. Any bad game made open world is a good game. You know, so listen, guys. Next week, we have Mag Max. Now, that's not Mad Max. Okay. Mad Max is a movie around this same time. So I can understand why some fans might think that they were going to release a Mad Max game. But no, we're playing M-A-G Max. This is Mag Max. And no, don't think that you're missing something. That doesn't mean anything to me. You guys know what a Mag Max is?

37:54 I have no idea. I don't know. I can't wait. I think it might be just an attempt to get people to think they're buying Mad Max if they look at it too quickly. Like Mad Max on VHS, but then they accidentally buy Mag Max on...

38:07 Transmorphers from the studio, the factory studio. I don't know. Yeah. All right. Well, we'll see you guys then. In the meantime, be sure to go check out at NostalgiaCast on Twitter because I'll be posting things about Mag Max all week, just like I did for Joust all this week. I bet you want to see what those mechanical ostriches look like. Well, let me tell you, they're on our Twitter. Again, that's at NostalgiaCast. You can reach out to us there, hit us up with any questions, feedback, concerns, whether you want Joe to stay on the show or not.

38:41 Please, vote me off. I think all those things are valid things to talk. So let's go ahead and do it. I'm Michael Esposito. You can find me at Esposito Film on Twitter, and I'll talk to you soon.

39:05 See you soon.