Rat Race

Rat Race was designed by Barry Oursler (concept by Steve Kordek) for Williams in 1983, but the game never went into production — only a handful of prototype units (10 confirmed) were built, making surviving examples extremely rare. It featured a tilting playfield controlled by joysticks, letting players incline the playfield itself to move the ball through various features — a two-player, head-to-head, flipperless design quite unlike typical pinball of the era.

Gameplay is characterized by its challenging and unpredictable nature: instead of flippers, players tilt the entire playfield to guide the ball toward scoring features, requiring strategic thinking about ball movement and trajectory. This tilting-playfield mechanic wasn't entirely new — Williams itself later revisited the idea with Alvin G.'s 'Dinosaur Eggs,' and an electromechanical predecessor, International Mutoscope's 1956 'Rock 'N Roll The Crazy Maze,' used a similar concept decades earlier.

As a solid-state machine that never reached full production, Rat Race remains a fascinating footnote in pinball history — an ambitious experiment in alternative control schemes that collectors and historians still seek out today.