Quoted from o-din:No, it's not. I owned Solar City the two player version. Every ball the same. Goofy face dudes on the backglass. This one may be a little less ugly, that's it.
Gotta side more with Shredso as to Target Alpha's appeal. Although it suffers from the standard EM multi-player resetting on every ball, it's still a fun game and I love the artwork on it - particularly the backglass. Very colorful and a nutty sci-fi theme! I'm a fan of Gordon Morison though (I know o-din is not).
I had a very nice Target Alpha that I lovingly restored from top to bottom for my daughter and her college housemates to play. They really enjoyed it, but once she moved and no longer had enough room, I had to sell it a couple of years ago. It went for $1,200 to a local (Seattle) non-pinhead buyer after being on the market for a while.
Finally, FWIW, a friend of mine bought a couple of games from Pin Rescue about 10 years ago when he first got into the hobby and didn't know better. The lack of work (basically none) that had been done on the electrical/mechanical components in the game was shocking. The games had pretty much just received a spit shine and the minimum amount of work needed to get them "operating".