Arcade Classic No. 4: Defender/Joust

Joust is an arcade game developed by Williams Electronics and released in 1982. While not the first game to feature two-player cooperative play, Joust was more successful than its predecessors and popularized the concept. The player uses a button and joystick to control a knight riding a flying ostrich. The object is to progress through levels by defeating groups of enemy knights riding buzzards. The mechanics of this game influenced titles by other developers. Joust was followed by a sequel four years later, and was ported to numerous home and portable platforms.

Defender is an arcade video game developed and released by Williams Electronics in February 1981. A horizontally scrolling shoot 'em up, the game is set on a fictional planet where the player must defeat waves of invading aliens while protecting astronauts. Development was led by Eugene Jarvis, a pinball programmer at Williams; Defender was Jarvis' first video game project and drew inspiration from Space Invaders and Asteroids. Defender was one of the most important titles of the Golden Age of Video Arcade Games, selling over 55,000 units to become the company's best selling game and one of the highest-grossing arcade games ever. It is frequently listed as one of Jarvis' best contributions to the video game industry, as well as one of the most difficult video games. Though not the first game to scroll horizontally, it created the genre of purely horizontal scrolling shooters. It inspired the development of other games and was followed by sequels and many imitations.

The Game Boy port was developed by Williams and published by Nintendo in 1995.

This version has many nice option settings to choose from, but Defender doesn't seem to run smoothly, and Joust was turned into a side-scroller, which makes the arena more confusing to navigate.

Both games are endless and become progressively harder, so I kill myself after showing everything.