Finally found a Joust - and it's great

Holy f##k. Immaculate.

Now... jrok it.

EhuKB3j.gif
 
Holy f##k. Immaculate.

Now... jrok it.

EhuKB3j.gif

Nah. No disrespect to JROK and his product, but since this cabinet is complete, I'll keep it that way. If it were gutted (like my Dig Dug was) then I'd probably do it.

I'll play Joust for a while. If I get tired of it, I'll pass the cabinet to another collector.
 
So beautiful! Looked at all the pics, and not one showing the coin counters! Since this was
mainly HUO, I'm curious to know how many quarters/play-clicks this got on it! Thanks!

I'd love to know how many plays as well. That thing is cherry!
 
If I get tired of it, I'll pass the cabinet to another collector.

You don't get tired of Joust...

Joust gets tired of you.

I've been thinking of modding my joysticks with the Zeroplay bearing kit

I was surprised when I asked Lon at ZapCon if he likes the Zeroplays and to my surprise...he has never played a Joust with them installed. Ever. And he has played a LOT of Joust machines. :)
 
I did the Lithium Battery Conversion Kit on my Joust and Robotron.

But I probably should have done the NVRAM Adapter instead.

Keep in mind, these NVRAM upgrades do require you to run your board with a bit more juice than normal. Especially on the older boards.

I have a Gyruss with Matt Osborn's NVRAM upgrade installed. If I run the board with an even 5v I would get sprite corruption on the player ships and title screens. Without the NVRAM, 5v doesn't show these symptoms. I've had to run a jumper wire from the 5v line of the edge connection to the NVRAM for powering it, instead of allowing it to suck on voltage off the rails under load.

On my Robotron I have the lithium battery mod, bought from Bob Roberts about 5 years ago, and it's still running strong.
 
Keep in mind, these NVRAM upgrades do require you to run your board with a bit more juice than normal. Especially on the older boards.

I have a Gyruss with Matt Osborn's NVRAM upgrade installed. If I run the board with an even 5v I would get sprite corruption on the player ships and title screens. Without the NVRAM, 5v doesn't show these symptoms. I've had to run a jumper wire from the 5v line of the edge connection to the NVRAM for powering it, instead of allowing it to suck on voltage off the rails under load.

On my Robotron I have the lithium battery mod, bought from Bob Roberts about 5 years ago, and it's still running strong.

Interesting. Very good information indeed. Thanks for pointing that out.

I'll keep rolling my lithium batteries, no issues thus far!
 
I'll play Joust for a while. If I get tired of it, I'll pass the cabinet to another collector.

If you play the game as intended by flying and trying you'll not get tired of it. It'll take you a long time to get the timing down to swoop down and peg a Tery in the mouth. The game is brilliant when played.

But the game has some design element mistakes that allow it to be hedged. If you cheat the game dynamics by manipulating the bottom ledge and picking off the enemy with minimal flapping, you'll quickly get bored of the game.

The blue Shadow Lords fly very fast and don't have randomized behavior which means they are highly predictable and easily manipulated. Plus the lack of a mix of enemies in the upper waves means you don't have to stay on your toes like Defender and Robotron require due to being hit from all directions by different enemy attacks all at once.


but if you get in and battle by flying, you'll not get bored and you'll be in plenty of adrenaline/panic situations that define a truly fun game.
 
But the game has some design element mistakes that allow it to be hedged. If you cheat the game dynamics by manipulating the bottom ledge and picking off the enemy with minimal flapping, you'll quickly get bored of the game.

I'm not great at Joust, but I would say I'm a tad better than a casual player- my high score is close to 300,000... but I'm with you here. If you just sit under the bottom ledge and wait to pick off enemies, you will get bored. But, I've been trying to get better at the game by using the middle area to kill the enemies. It's much more challenging (for me) and it helps down the road on the levels with open play and less ledges.
 
I'm not great at Joust, but I would say I'm a tad better than a casual player- my high score is close to 300,000... but I'm with you here.

You are right on the cusp of taking off to marathoning the game.
Once you can get to wave 60 with some lives built up you'll not have to deal with gray and red enemies which simplifies the game greatly. by wave 90ish the shadow lords are rockin' full speed and the game doesn't get any faster.

So when you can recover from a wave-start mistake by manipulating the blue guys, and how to read their bouncing trajectories while hovering pixel close to the top of the screen....you've got the game licked.

Due to the more relaxed pace, the game is the easiest of the Williams suite to master, but it is so unique with the pinball-esque trajectories that it is hard to compare it directly to the other big 2. John N says he was a chess player and he loved pinball, which is the underlying design of the game. Cool backstories on this title.


BTW- Here is the programmer's own website full of fun and interesting tidbits- http://pfutz.us/pinball.htm
 
Hey, the OP, in VAPS, only rated this machine a "B+". Damn, that's harsh.


Joust Videogame Original/dedicated B+ Player Original survivor, numbers matching cabinet. SUPER Clean.
 
You are right on the cusp of taking off to marathoning the game.
Once you can get to wave 60 with some lives built up you'll not have to deal with gray and red enemies which simplifies the game greatly. by wave 90ish the shadow lords are rockin' full speed and the game doesn't get any faster.

So when you can recover from a wave-start mistake by manipulating the blue guys, and how to read their bouncing trajectories while hovering pixel close to the top of the screen....you've got the game licked.

Due to the more relaxed pace, the game is the easiest of the Williams suite to master, but it is so unique with the pinball-esque trajectories that it is hard to compare it directly to the other big 2. John N says he was a chess player and he loved pinball, which is the underlying design of the game. Cool backstories on this title.


BTW- Here is the programmer's own website full of fun and interesting tidbits- http://pfutz.us/pinball.htm

HAHAHAHAHAHA I wish that was the case, but I truly suck at video games and my best game took everything I had to survive. Thanks for the tips and confidence in my abilities. :D
 
I have 2 questions - I'm in the middle of rebuilding the power supply board on this game:

  1. How do I safely remove the serial number sticker on the large capacitor to keep it and transfer it to my new cap?
  2. Speaking of the cap, my rebuild kit from Peter came with an 18,000uf cap, but this board clearly has a 6800uf cap. What gives? Can I change it? SHOULD I change it?

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Screw it, just leave that cap in place til it fails.

Being such a HUGE capacitor, I'm inclined to agree with you. It's testing fine with the ESR meter.

I guess I could hook the board up and test for voltages without the game pcb connected and go from there.
 
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