All the usual things that make a great pinball machine are present

-Artwork, Call outs, sound effects, DMD video is all top notch (no flaws).
-great shooting, ramps, orbits, flow, just enough toys with the Martians and the diverter and center drop bank

I think the absence of any major flaws is what makes it great

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What makes it number 1 is the rules (easy to understand but difficult to master)

-Easy multi-ball to start but challenging to get the super skill shot
-Easy to battle cities but hard to complete all
-5-way combo I’m not saying it’s easy to get for me but it does leave enough time that you can get a run going
-Nice hurry up implementation when you make 3 shots then build all the way to total annihilation.
- Martian Attack mode

fun super high scoring pin (some say this shouldn’t matt if you make 10K or 100M points for a shot but it’s just crazy fun to get hundreds of millions of points in bonus or mode competition

*** my favorite mode is Martian attack It’s fun to qualify (two stages to qualify the multiball) and then to play battle great call outs

I think it’s simplistic layout and rules are what has found success in other pins like Tron and IM. AFM seems just a tad better.

I’ll contrast with LotR which is also excellent in most every thing. But LotR was not as fun to me, I didn’t have as much fun playing LotR and was almost like work and not as satisfying to play over and over.

AFM is simple and fun, even a bad game on AFM will have a moment where you were in Multiball or in a hurry up or in a combo run. Just great fun, while LotR seems like I need to get a bit farther in to see the great stuff, AFM has a lot more close to the beginning of the game.

I have yet to get to the total annihilation multiball yet.

I think some people would say it’s empty because it doesn’t have a lot of moving parts or magnets or upper/lower PF or extra flippers. Comparing it to TZ or JD it’s kind of just basic 2 flipper what you see is what you get.