I used to wonder that myself, but now I'm in for the LE. This is my grail game, I originally joined Pinside in order to buy one but lost out on it. Since then the prices just continued to soar. I'm sure glad I didn't pay $10k for one before.

After watching the hammering that MM and AFM prices have taken from the remakes, I figured an affordable original MB would be in my future. All I had to do was wait. I really wanted an original.

But the LE is so much improved, I had to do it. Who knows how long it will be for original games to re-enter the market given the price on the CE remake is so low. Original owners understandably won't want to take that much of a hit. CGC priced this game correctly, because it changed my mind.

I'm currently in for non-matching MBrLE.

Went to The Arcade in Brighton yesterday, and got excited when I saw a flawless AFMLE there.

I was simply...just...beautiful.

Started playing and immediately discovered the left flipper is screwed. Acting exactly like the hold coil transistor was latching up. Seen that before when a coil is changed and they forget to replace the recirculation diode, after so many voltage spikes the transistor becomes a thyristor. It looked like an electronic problem to me for several reasons.

Regardless, we told the dude, and he comes out to take a look at it. Runs some diagnostics, lifts the playfield, looks under it for a bit, fiddles with a few things, puts playfield back down, runs more diagnostics, game turned off for the remainder of our visit which was around five hours.

I even told the guy when he started looking at it, "I'm very curious to see what you can do with this because I have MBr on order, and I'm worried about this new system".

I'm not too happy to see that the game remained dead. This arcade at least used to have good techs, so while it might not be that bad, I really wanted to see the soldering iron come out and that game come back to life. There are a lot of games there, its not too crowded, and the place only open on the weekends and not even all day. Its not like the game was getting hammered constantly. The playfield is like glass.

There is another local AFMLE at Marvin's Mechanical Museum in Farmington Hills. One of the tri-color LEDs on the big saucer was not working. Another electronic problem. These games are in places where they should be well maintained. Am I being too pessimistic?

I'm sulking about resuming the hopeless search for an affordable nice original MB again. I want something I can fix later on.
Even one LED not working will make me blow a gasket after spending $8300+tax.

I noticed the same on mine, figured we simply had not gotten far enough into the game for it to do anything. A couple weeks later after MOR, and still no plasma action, I went to test mode and it didn't work there either. Checked the wiring and connections, nothing found. Flick the disc real hard with a finger and it came on. Vibration from the game makes it quickly stop working again. So mine is defective. I put in a ticket and they are supposed to send me one, but its been several weeks. I received an email saying they will send it when they get another batch in. So be prepared to wait awhile.