It's a good machine, one of Sega's best, and a sleeper. For a long time machines were only considered good if they were deep, so many of these fell through the cracks. This is a very fast and fun machine loaded with MB's and little extras. The light show with LED'd flashers is insane.
It's one major flaw, however, is that you can get the finale awarded on recon 6. That sort of ruins the final, and I'm not a fan of that, and wish you could turn that off. The higher recon stuff is quite useful, and it's hard to avoid going to 6, which is an obvious option.
The nukem feature for planets visited is another great idea for this machine. Many don't know of the trick for this tricky saucer shot, which is hold the ball on the regular right flipper, and then shoot the little upper right. If your flippers are positioned correct, this will hit that saucer dead on everytime.
By the way, I love the thread title haha.
Did you make the second hole yourself? What did you use? I assume this is a Stern protector?