Road Runner

The Road Runner, designed by Marty Rosenthal and released by Atari in 1979, is a widebody pinball machine that brought Looney Tunes' Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote to the playfield. Only two units are confirmed to exist today, making it an exceptionally rare piece of pinball history.

Key features of the Road Runner include three flippers, two pop bumpers, and two roll-under spinners. The inclusion of messenger balls - three in total - is particularly noteworthy: two are positioned behind a 4-bank of drop targets, and the third behind a single drop target, requiring players to time their shots to release them into play. The game ran on Atari's System 3 hardware, a board that was never mass-produced, though it can reportedly also run on System 2 hardware.

The Road Runner's artwork features the iconic Looney Tunes characters amid a vibrant desert landscape. As one of Atari's forays into licensed pinball theming in the late 1970s, and given its extreme scarcity, the Road Runner is a significant piece for collectors interested in the history of licensed pinball machines.