Joust 2: Survival Of The Fittest

As with the prequel, two players can play this game simultaneously, adding a great deal of extra enjoyment some levels "require" cooperative team play, others reward competition.

Major differences from the original include:

• Vertical screen, requiring much more emphasis on skilled vertical flying
• Transform button, allowing one to convert the standard ostrich mount into the pegasus mount. The ostrich is lighter and much more maneuverable the pegasus is heavier allowing faster vertical drops and has a stronger attack against the enemies particularly bats, but is much harder to keep in the air.
• Highly-varied level environments, adorned with unusual objects such as lightning-producing gargoyle statues, chanting mouths, trees, etc. In all there are something like 35 different screen levels.
• Additional enemy types, such as fast-flying mutant knights produced when eggs fall into the lava or water pits, bats, cyber-pterodactyls which lay bat-producing crystals.
• The golden egg -- on each level there is an enemy who, when killed, releases a golden egg. When the golden egg is grabbed by the player, elsewhere on the level a random-effect generator is created. This spot rapidly scrolls through a variety of bonuses, and when the player steps on the spot, one of the effects is generated includes things like bonus points, extra lives, even a super-zap.
• Hatchlings can kill -- the tiny mount-less enemy knights awaiting pick-up by their vultures can now kill the player if the player lands on their long lances. The hatchlings move from side to side now, so the player must be careful to avoid the moving lance. The hatchlings can only be killed from behind if you are in Ostrich mode. If you touch them when they are facing you they will kill you instead. If you are in Pegasus mode, you cannot be hurt by the hatchlings at all and can kill them from either direction.
• Some levels contain a large central "black knight statue". These levels can be cleared by using the ordinary means killing all enemies on the screen or by simply by knocking out the four red pins associated with the black knight statue.

The production run has been estimated at 500 to 1000, but one source has claimed 1080. In general, because they came on the market late and disappeared soon after, they can frequently be found in excellent condition.

Similar in basic design to the original Joust. Joust 2 has stencil-type painted side-art, depicting a knight mounted on an ostrich. Eggs and lightning bolts adorn the monitor bezel art, and the control panel is a colorful combination of yellow, purple and light blue, illustrating the transformation of an ostrich into a pegasus.

An update of the classic William's hardware Joust, Robotron: 2084, Sinistar, Bubbles. The boardset is nearly identical to Inferno, Mystic Marathon and Turkey Shoot. The PCB can be converted to run Inferno by adding a couple of RAM ICs, swapping in a new set of ROMs and moving a few jumpers.