
I loved Joust in the arcade! It's one of my favorites as well. I didn't have a 2600 as a kid, but I did have a 5200 and I had Joust on it. It was one of my most played games on the 5200 alongside Pengo and River Raid.
On one of the early Midway collections, they put in Joust 2! I didn't even know Joust 2 existed until that collection. I've never seen it in an arcade. If I saw it in an arcade as a kid, I would've freaked out! Have you ever seen it or played it?
Only other game I know of that plays like Joust is Balloon Fight. Andrew mentioned this before, but Balloon Fight was made by Satoru Iwata, former president of Nintendo and HAL Labs. But sorry Iwata up in Heaven, but I still like Joust better. I read somewhere that to get the hang of programming for the NES, Iwata made arcade games like Defender 2 and Joust. Later on these were actually published by HAL for the NES!
Here's an interesting video I watched recently about Joust.