Previous Next

Things are so bad in Joust's world of the Shadow Lords that it's up to you, astride an Ostron (or ostrich) to defend the universe from the evil flying buzzards which are the bane of everything good and decent.

Once mounted on your Ostron your task is to destroy as many of the evil buzzards as possible by flying into them at an altitude higher than theirs. If you should be unfortunate enough to meet one of these avian menaces head on or below, you become so much buzzard bait.

Each buzzard has a different value according to colour. The dreaded Shadow Lords themselves add 150 points to your total.

You start out with five lives, a fair number considering the difficulty of the task before you. These are mean buzzards.

I soon become aware of basic tactical manoeuvres essential to the success of any serious buzzard-beaters. These include using the various vertical barriers that divide up the field of play as barriers against the attacks of the buzzards.

It's also worth noting that these dastardly fellows have a way of suddenly doing tricky little dips and darts that leave the inexperienced Ostron flyer quite unprepared for the inevitable attack.

Each time you kill off a wave of buzzards you move on to a harder category of play in which ultimately the screen seems to be full of nothing but the evil green Shadow Lords themselves. These fellows are much harder to kill than their comparatively dull-witted cousins. And just to make matters worse your poor Ostron moves more slowly in each succeeding stage.

This is in fact one of the best things about Joust - no matter what level of skill you reach it will always get harder.

Sound effects for the game are adequate - there are no bells and whistles, just a convincing sort of squelch sound each time a buzzard finds his target and rather pleasing zap sound when you bring down one of the enemy.

Scores are tabulated clearly in the bottom left hand corner of the screen and a high score table featuring the top ten scoring players of any given Joust session is shown at the end of each game.

Joust is a good, straightforward and challenging game that becomes more interesting the more you play.