Joust

Joust is Williams' 1982 physics game disguised as a knight story: you ride a flying ostrich over lava pits and rock platforms, and the entire combat rule is altitude - flap above an enemy rider and you kill him, drift below and he kills you. That is the whole game, and it is perfect.

The flap mechanic makes it deep: your bird has real momentum, each button press is one wingbeat, and hovering is impossible - you are always trading height for position. Buzzardmen ride in from ledges, the pterodactyl sweeps the screen low, and killing riders spawns eggs you must collect before they hatch into new enemies. The 2-player mode is where Joust becomes legendary: friendly knights can kill each other by the same altitude rule, so every match is co-op until it suddenly is not. The later waves turn the arena into lava-survival with platforms melting away, and the game's fidelity to its one physical rule over hundreds of waves is a masterclass in single-idea design.

• ▸Altitude combat: higher wing wins, lower wing dies
• ▸A real flap-and-glide flight model with momentum
• ▸Egg collection as a timed cleanup phase after every kill
• ▸Simultaneous 2-player where the co-op partner is also a threat