OP

Quoted from frolic:

Well, since this my thread.. we're approaching almost a year of ownership of Full Throttle... here is how we're doing:
-The game has never sat dark during the entire time I've had it.
-Problems I've dealt with are of the minor variety... loose connections mostly.
-Original backbox lcd died, was replaced with large LCD.
-I did get the "speaker hum" issue, but it's been outlined in another thread the solution is to unbundle the speaker wires from the main trunk.
-The game did crash on occasion with version 1.0 software. With version 1.2 I've only seen it crash once (needs a cold reboot when this happens).
-I was just sent version 1.41 to update but have not done it yet.
Overall, in hindsight, in my desire to be the first owner there was high risk of the game not working for periods of time. I trusted Andrew that if something were to happen he would fix me up, but fortunately nothing major (worst was the LCD failure which was simple enough, and there is the playfield screen so the game was still playable at that time) has happened.
I think rule-wise the game could use some retooling, with real world feedback showing that the international race modes are generally avoided. Everyone basically works the multiball stacking strategy and avoids the scoop completely. Country races just seem too high risk for little reward.
But the game overall is fun, shoots awesome, and the mentioned stacking multiballs is a really fun pinball experience. I just think that half the game modes are avoided in general so that could be revisited.