Hop in — Williams’ Taxi, a 1988 collaboration between designer Mark Ritchie and artist Python Anghelo, is a breezy, character-stuffed romp through the streets of a cartoon city. The premise couldn’t be simpler: pick up a roster of oddball passengers and ferry them for fares. The fares in question are a who’s-who of late-80s pop-culture caricature — among them Lola, Dracula, Santa, the robot Pinbot, and “Gorbie,” a Gorbachev stand-in voiced, in a fun bit of family trivia, by Mark’s brother and fellow design legend Steve Ritchie.

The flow of the game is all about staying in motion. Pick up all five passengers to light the jackpot, and once you’ve started multiball the goal is to never leave it — after a multiball ends, grabbing a fresh passenger relights the lock so you can roll straight into the next one. The right saucer locks the ball and the left ramp releases it, a tidy loop that disciplined players keep spinning all game long (just beware a multiplayer opponent who might steal your locked balls). There’s real value in the small stuff, too: the “25K plus pickup” is almost always the right shot.

A skill-shot wrinkle gives the early balls extra weight — the plunger lane feeds the Spin-Out whirlpool, and the skill-shot multiplier climbs each ball, so a 100K award on ball one is worth triple by ball three. Light and funny where Steve Ritchie’s machines are fast and fierce, Taxi shows the other Ritchie’s gift for accessible, personality-driven design. It’s a perennial favorite that still earns its fare every time the meter starts running.