nesdev.org

"Balloon Fight" is obviously based on "Joust". But am I the only one who thinks that it also has a bunch of similarities with "Mario Bros."?

Yes, you are. Mario Bros.'s game mechanics are different from Balloon Fight or Joust.

It does have similar mechanics for acceleration and the skid stop.

It has similarities as far as a need to disable an enemy before destroying them. If you don't destroy them in time they recover.

Not only that.
But they are both two player games where the characters can influence each other.
The goal is to defeat all opponents on the screen.
When the opponents get back on their feet, they become quicker and get another color.
When you defeat an opponent, an item for extra points appears from a fixed location (coins, bubbles) and it's exactly one item for each opponent.
When you stay in a level for too long, an object that tries to kill you moves around the screen (fireballs, lighting balls).
The bonus level consists of collecting as many objects as possible in a limited time without any opponents or the possibility to die.

Is there any other game that combines all those things?
To me, the similarities are no coincidence. They had succeeded with one game and then they did another with different gameplay, but the same general attributes.

Mario Bros. is believed to have been inspired by Joust, and Balloon Fight was Nintendo getting more brazen and doing a direct clone.

DRW wrote: Is there any other game that combines all those things?

AFAIK, many.
Most of those single-screen games have most of these things.
For example, Bubble Bobble (and possibly other similar games such as Rodland) has all these features, though you may argue that games that came afterwards just "took reference" to older games.

Never saw any similarities between the two games. For me both balloon fight and Mario Bros are two very different games. I don't know about the technical similarities but while playing I don't find them same.

Compare.

• Joust: Stun enemies by colliding while higher, come back, and collect their bodies before they recover.
• Mario Bros.: Stun enemies by bashing the floor beneath them, come back, and collect their bodies before they recover.
• Bubble Bobble: Stun enemies by shooting them, come back, and collect their bodies before they recover.

Change the stun rule of Mario Bros. to that of Joust and you've started implementing the stomp rule of Super Mario Bros.

tepples wrote: Joust: Stun enemies by colliding while higher, come back, and let them recover so they grow into bad-ass SHADOW LORDS and can be a real challenge

Fixed that error for you

I actually agree; Mario Bros. is really similar to Joust just with up & down reversed.

ccovell wrote:I actually agree; Mario Bros. is really similar to Joust just with up & down reversed.

While the big concept of the game, disabling enemies and destroying them before they can rebuild, is similar, what makes joust challenging and what makes Mario Bros (not?) challenging are two very different ideas.

mikejmoffitt wrote:what makes joust challenging and what makes Mario Bros (not?) challenging are two very different ideas.

More challenging, or just less familiar? Perhaps the big reason that you're more familiar with the control method in Mario Bros. than that in Joust and its clone Balloon Fight is that so many more games released after Mario Bros. have incorporated its control method, including most 2D SMB series games.

tepples wrote:

mikejmoffitt wrote:what makes joust challenging and what makes Mario Bros (not?) challenging are two very different ideas.

More challenging, or just less familiar? Perhaps the big reason that you're more familiar with the control method in Mario Bros. than that in Joust and its clone Balloon Fight is that so many more games released after Mario Bros. have incorporated its control method, including most 2D SMB series games.

No, I meant more challenging. That's why I wrote that. Joust predates Mario Bros, but I grew up playing both around the same time. Neither was any less familiar than the other.

In order to move left or right, the player must be mounted on a platform, a very vulnerable state, or must be flapping. In other words, in-air direction changes require the player to ascend at the same time; Balloon Fight borrows this mechanic and it's why Balloon Fight is Mediocre Joust With Stages. Different enemies with different AI occupy different regions of the screen, and the player has to be circumspect in response. In order to kill an enemy a player must collide with its lance higher than that of the buzzard, but upon killing an enemy the player is bounced up a bit, which could mean death from another buzzard above. On higher levels kills have to be somewhat planned and executed efficiently.

Mario Bros is a fun game, but it doesn't even begin to approach the level of finesse and detail that Joust requires to be good at.

I've recently seen the claim in a couple of sources that Nintendo had deliberately used Joust as direct inspiration for Mario Bros.