Quoted from Pmaino:Not really sure what I like to be honest. I used to play my buddies pinball machine Special Forces all the time in high school. That was a blast. My favorite machines that I played in arcades were Attack from Mars and Indiana Jones.
I do enjoy when there are "missions" to accomplish during the game like there are in Medieval Madness.
Hope this helps a bit.
Haha, you have some expensive taste! AFM and MM in particular are going to be some of the highest price game you can find, but there are plenty of other great games that you can get that sense of progression under 3k. Things that come to mind immediately are "The Shadow" as mentioned before. This can run a bit over 3k at times, but if you hunt, you should be able to find something. There are plenty of modes to light that give that progression sense. Another one that has very similar progression to AFM is Revenge from Mars. It's a Pinball 2000 game that has an animated screen reflected onto the playfield. It has a similar layout to Attack from Mars, but has the added layer of the "holograms" on the playfield. It doesn't tend to be as big of a hit gameplay wise as Attack, but it's still pretty cool.
You could actually still go for something a bit more old school like Eight Ball Deluxe, in which you are trying to complete the entire rack of balls and sink your eight ball while increasing your bonus multiplier. It doesn't have any "story" progression, but it is a progressive objective game.
OOH, Black Rose may be good if you can find it at a good price. It's all about blowing stuff up like in MM or AFM and has a ton of cool modes that are really satisfying.
Finally, check out the "bang for your buck" list here on pinside:
https://pinside.com/pinball/top-100/bangforbuck
Hopefully that helps a bit. Good luck with your search!