Road Runner (NES)

Road Runner

Platform: NES Year: 1989 Developer: Beam Software Buy: Amazon

This page is for the NES version of the game. For other versions, see Road Runner.

Road Runner is a port of the arcade game developed by Atari, and was released on the NES by Tengen. Road Runner was ported to some home computers and the NES was the only home console that saw a port of it. The NES version of Road Runner was developed by Beam Software, though they aren't mentioned in the game, probably to avoid Nintendo banning them from developing games for their consoles due to Tengen publishing games without Nintendo's approval. It was originally meant to be released by Mindscape, but Mindscape lost the rights and the rights reverted to Tengen.

In Road Runner, you play as the Road Runner from the Looney Tunes cartoons. There are four stages which repeat forever (but get progressively harder with more obstacles). You must make it to the end of the level without getting caught by Wile E. Coyote. It may sound simple, but throughout the level, you must collect as much bird seed as you can in order for you to keep on going. Once your bird seed runs out, you die.

Screenshots

The title screen. Wile E. Coyote going after Road Runner on rocket skates.

This page needs more screenshots.

Music

The game's soundtrack consists of several public domain pieces like in the arcade.

The game lacks credits, but Gavan Anderson has given us verification that he worked on the music. According to Gavan, Tania helped finish off the second stage theme (Flight of the Bumble Bee) since Gavan had to tour. Tania was not officially working at Beam Software at the time. Gavan said this about the song:

“

I started it .. wrote it up and Tania finished it off because I'd gone on a national tour playing guitar for a a Legends Show. We had to cut it down as the finished tune was too big to fit in the game.

„

If you listen to the music (especially Stage Theme 4), you'll notice that the music sounds very similar to Back to the Future (NES). Like Back to the Future, the game's music is sped up to 300 and 225 BPM. Gavan said that he didn't control the tempo of the music, the programmers did.

The parentheses represent the names of the source files. The music are .T files and the sounds are .F files.

Recording

#	Title	Internal Name	Composer	Arranger	Programmer	Length	Listen	Download
01	Stage Theme 1 (William Tell Overture)	WILLTELL	Gioachino Rossini	Gavan Anderson	Neil Brennan	2:17		Download
02	Stage Theme 2 (Flight of the Bumblebee)	BEE	Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov	Gavan Anderson, Tania Smith	Neil Brennan	0:50		Download
03	Stage Theme 3 (Sabre Dance)	SABRE	Aram Khachaturian	Gavan Anderson	Neil Brennan	1:40		Download
04	Stage Theme 4 (Trepak)	DANCING	Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky	Gavan Anderson	Neil Brennan	0:55		Download
05	Death Theme 1 (Unknown Lose Fanfare)	DEATH	Unknown	Gavan Anderson	Neil Brennan	0:02		Download
06	Death Theme 2 (Dragnet)	-	Miklós Rózsa	Gavan Anderson	Neil Brennan	0:02		Download
07	Game Over (The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down)	WARNER	Cliff Friend, David Franklin	Gavan Anderson	Neil Brennan	0:31		Download

Credits

• Ripper: N/A
• Recorder: Doommaster1994
• Game Credits:
  • Not Credited Arranger: Gavan Anderson
  • Not Credited Arranger: Tania Smith
  • Not Credited Programmer: Neil Brennan
  • Not Credited Composer: Gioachino Rossini
  • Not Credited Composer: Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov
  • Not Credited Composer: Aram Khachaturian
  • Not Credited Composer: Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
  • Not Credited Composer: Miklós Rózsa
  • Not Credited Composer: Cliff Friend
  • Not Credited Composer: David Franklin

(Verified by Gavan Anderson; Game lacks credits.)

Game Rip

This rip is missing songs.

Format	Download
	N/A

Releases

USA Title: Road Runner Platform: NES Released: 1989-??-?? Publisher: Tengen, Inc.     USA Title: Road Runner Platform: NES Released: Unreleased Publisher: Mindscape