+1 for humor not being an important factor. A B/W fan here! Anyway I cannot care less for fun callouts after ten games. My biggest mistake in pinball was believing the hype for "humoresque callouts" in RFM. Sold that shitty pin (pin???) after 3 days: felt so light and clean after selling it.
I see also that people often refer to b/w mainly talking about wpc95 titles. I think many pre wpc95 are better.
About Sterns: in general i do not like most of the licensed pins, and basically all Sterns. No characther and plastic feel.

That's obvious. I hope nobody here believe that all single titles by one brand are superior to any single titles of another brand. We are talking considering the average quality. Agreed, every brand produced some good stuff. But I think its more a discussion about "feel" here, otherwise it would be better to discuss individual titles. What is feel? Difficult to describe, but I think its a very subjective thing: a mix of nostalgia, look, type of build, themes, music, etc. Not really an objective judjement of pure gameplay then. The thing is that in pinball pure gameplay is not exactly the same as fun. All the other elements creating the "feel" are also an important part of the overall enjoyment of a machine. Having said that, in the long run some machines have more lasting power than others: better to listen to the opinion of (unbiased) people with long experience.

The top100 ranking is totally fake and manipulated. Firstly because its simply about people rating high their own machines. The more they paid, the more they lie. Secondly, instead of looking to the ranking position, check the scores. It goes from 8.8 to 6.8 from #1 to #300. From #1 to #50 there is a spread of less than 1 point!! (0.9). From #51 to #100 there is a gap of 0.3 point!! And even smaller difference from #100 to #300. So it means that all owners rate very high their own machines. Also, there are comments and pure votes. Votes are hidden, but are the majority. Manipulation (hopefully not from the insiders, just a joke of course) could be easily applied, in order to create a kind of believable and presentable ranking.

Considering that theme and feel plays a big role in the subjective appreciation of a machine, I do not think a random 8.8 machine is necessarily better than a 7.8 machine. The difference of just 1 point is not much at all. But its the difference between #1 (MM) and #67 (Batman).

Correct. So if you factor this in, basically all machines end up with extremely similar scores. Mathematically there will always be a #1, but with those tiny spreads it does not make sense.
So how it comes that MM, TZ... (a TZ owner here, looove it, and speaking against my interest) still have a tiny advantage over the others, giving the ranking a "common sense" perception? How it comes Big Lebowski perfectly lands at 8.82 after only 17 votes? Aahhh mysteries, mysteries....