Play Road Runner Online

Summary

The unreleased Atari 5200 prototype titled Road Runner is a quirky puzzle‑action hybrid that re‑skins a likely port of the arcade game Locomotion. The board is built from sliding tiles, each showing a slice of the desert road that both Wiley E. Coyote and the Road Runner traverse. By shifting tiles you can forge routes toward piles of birdseed or toward side tunnels that warp you across the screen—though some tunnel mouths are merely painted on, and Wiley will slam into them and lose a life. The Road Runner can backtrack from dead‑ends and is effectively invincible, but you can corner him on two dead‑end tiles to finish a level at your leisure. Contact with the Road Runner nets you 10 points and sends him back to his start, while Wiley earns 35 points per tile crossed and 50 points for each seed pile collected. The game’s blend of tile‑sliding strategy and classic chase humor makes this lost cartridge a fascinating footnote in Atari’s history.

Storyline

At the start of each level a birdseed truck weaves its way through the maze, dropping piles of birdseed as it goes.

The player must slide the tiles so that Wile E. Coyote can gobble up as much seed as possible before the Road Runner reaches it. Once all the birdseed is gone, the game moves on to the next level.