Joust (1982)

Jousting by itself is as good a concept as any for a video game. In 1982 John Newcomer added flight to it when he designed Joust for Williams. 

Joust is known as much for the fact that the player rides on the back of a flying ostrich as it is for its gameplay. It comes across as the kind of weirdness that is often associated with classic fantasy, although when it's picked apart there is a logic behind it. Newcomer was going for an arcade game that didn't involve shooting like so many others, and when he settled on the idea of riding birds for their emotional connection to players (as well as inspired by numerous bits of sci-fi and fantasy fiction such as the hawkmen in Flash Gordon), he found after researching that as beautiful as eagles were in flight, he didn't care for how they looked when they ran and running does factor a bit into gameplay. Ostriches do look great when they're running (since that's kind of what they do), so he went with the fantasy that these ostriches can fly, too. Some of the promotional art for the game also indicates that the birds have some kind of cybernetic enhancement. Newcomer also said the ostriches were good precisely because of how unique a choice they were - everyone going to the arcade would remember that game with the flying ostriches.

With the flying bird concept settled, he decided to go with a two-way joystick - similar to Defender's but horizontal instead of vertical - and a single button to control flapping. The faster you hit the button, the faster you ascend, so the core of the game is mastering the sense of the characters' weight. It's also an early example of a two-player cooperative game, with player 2's character riding the back of a stork to make for a visually distinct sprite.

The game is essentially a deathmatch scenario. The player controls a golden knight riding his ostrich. He has to defeat every other enemy on the screen. The bad guys all ride buzzards and come in three flavors: Bounders (red) are fairly stupid; Hunters (gray) are more aggressive and will even attempt to hover over the player in some circumstances; and Shadow Lords (blue) are very fast and powerful and tend to zoom into the air and bounce off the "ceiling" downward just as fast, making them very dangerous. Defeating an enemy simply requires that the player's lance makes contact with them on a higher plane (being perfectly level with an enemy results in a draw of course). When an enemy is beaten, his bird drops an egg and the player must scoop it up before it hatches. If it hatches, it reveals an enemy of the next level higher level, but the player still has a few seconds to run him over before he mounts a fresh buzzard.

The field is peppered with floating platforms, so the characters all have to try to kill each other while quickly slipping through the gaps in the platforms. As the game progresses, platforms will vanish - open space tends to favor the computer since the player is outnumbered and can't hide as much above or beneath the platforms. There's also a lava pit surrounding the lowest level and early on a "lava troll" will start trying to grab fliers who drop too low over the pit. The troll doesn't discriminate and will grab enemies, too. If grabbed, the player needs to hammer the flap button rapidly to ascend out of the troll's grip while hoping an opportunistic enemy doesn't kill them while they're immobilized (and the player can benefit from this in the opposite circumstance). 

To prevent rounds from dragging, before long an ear-splitting cry will announce the coming of the "Unbeatable?" Pterodactyl, an invincible creature that homes in on the player until the round is finished. The reason for the question mark, though, is that a last-minute programming change resulted in the pterodactyl being vulnerable in a tiny spot, allowing the player to temporarily vanquish it through a pixel-perfect strike into its mouth.

Joust is as perfect an arcade game as has ever been created, especially if one is grading based on how a game feels to play. Unlike Defender, which was deliberately designed to frighten players with the complexity of its controls (you have to push a button just to switch direction), Joust's controls are approachable. The physics are extremely finely tuned and easy to get to grips with in terms of gravity and the rhythm of hitting the flap button, as well as understanding the bird's sense of speed. When the game is really up to speed, the sense of soaring through the air is unparalleled in a game of its time. You actually feel graceful while playing it. As a contrast, Nintendo released a Joust clone called Balloon Fight a couple of years later, and while it's a very good game, it's still inferior to Joust in terms of how it feels to play. 

Joust has a fair difficulty curve. It looks and sounds great, too. Williams's games tended to have instantly memorable soundscapes, and the animation by Bill Pfutzenreuter is smooth and conveys a sense of character, particularly touches like the how the ostrich will do a Looney Tunes-style foot-braking when it has to stop after running.