Emu Joust
Game Meta:“Emu Joust” is a clone of the Williams Arcade game, “Joust” (1982) . In “Joust”, a knight rides a flying ostrich, and attempts to collide with enemies to defeat them. For “Emu Joust”, the Australian flightless bird, the emu, jumps between platforms, flapping its wings. The authors shamelessly replicating the avian inaccuracies of the original game. Enemies are vultures, but could easily be mistaken for kangaroos!
The game was review in MBUG’s “Catcher” Newsletter in January 1984:
“EMU JOUST:” This is an arcade game that is bound to make anyone smile. You are a knight flying on a magic emu and you joust with the dreaded vulture knights. You flap your emu’s wings to fly and you must pounce upon a vulture knight from above face-on. He turns into an egg. If you don’t eat the egg, it hatches and turns into a more cunning knight. The graphics are simply brilliant even if they are a bit on the small side. This program is joystick-compatible (not ‘compatable’) or else you can pound the hell out of your keyboard. Well worth buying.
(Courtesy of Alan Laughton Microbee Software Preservation Project)
Version information:
The game was originally released by Mytek, but when that company collapsed, it was snapped up by Honeysoft, who released it on one of their compilation disks.
The game was released on Honeysoft Penny Arcade floppy and Honeysoft Joystick Games Vol 1.
“Emu Joust” is part of both the Microbee Software Preservation Project (MSPP) collection and the Microbee Beeboard.
We know nothing about the authors of “Emu Joust” if you do please contribute information to the archive.
(Information courtesy of Alan Laughton Microbee Software Preservation Project)
Screenshots:
Title Screen, Microbee
Screenshot, Microbee
Screenshot, Microbee
I remember absolutely loving this game on our Microbee as a child, especially that exhilarating feeling of gliding around on your emu as you got better at the controls. The only problem was your had to keep hitting the shift key to flap the wings, and we eventually broke that key on our keyboard completely.