Fish Tales meets that criteria. Going for monster fish, rock the boat, or for multiball are all viable strategies for racking up big points. Game is also a very fast player. It's a little newer and a bit more recent, but Stern Star Trek Pro is a ton of bang for your buck and very deep for your dollar. Scoring is balanced and going through the modes is actually a viable strategy.

I think in the 90s lots of good options out there, in the 4-5K range it does limit but one option I would consider is Baywatch. Good value for the money, layout from Balcer is good and lots of different shots, multiball is balanced very well with scoring with modes of the game. Just a fun pin and actually a good shooter. Really clean ones are 4K and less for ones that need a bit of TLC.

X2 agree with Sataneatscheese Stern ST Pro is a great option and priced in the low 5s. Fun layout and modes are balanced well in scoring.

BSD is a pretty brutal game and seems to be all about stacking the multiballs so not sure it fits the criteria you are looking for in a tradtional mode or multiball balanced scoring game.

Star Trek Pro is a great game and hasn't taken off in price like a lot of the others. Great recommendation if you can find one. It's one of four games I kept after chopping down from 15, along with the Shadow.

BSD, not so much. If you want to blow it up there's only one thing to do, stack 2 or 3 multiballs. Great game though.

NBA Fastbreak is almost comically balanced. Everything in the game is worth 1, 2, or 3 points except the 10-point trivia question. All the modes & multiballs are pretty much equally lucrative. There's a setting for larger "pinball" scoring, but I don't think it changes much beyond adding some zeroes and giving pity points for things like pop bumpers, etc.

Funny that you would mention BSD, because of all the pinballs I know, this is the most UN-balanced scoring pinball I can think of...

Other than Doctor Dude (One Gazillion points) and Bride of Pinbot (Welcome to the Billionaires club), oh, and Johnny Mnemonic with it's inflated scoring... (Actually, there are a lot of unbalanced scoring games now that I think about it...)

BSD games break into 'I didn't stack the multiballs' so I score less than a billion, to 'I stacked all three multiballs' where the scoring is potentially 9-20 billion. Wild swings in scoring. Way unbalanced.

NBA fastbreak is a good option, because you only get points for shooting baskets. Long games equal higher scores.

This is a good question.

I'm interested in seeing what the community thinks about Willie Wonka for balanced scoring.

When OP talks about balance, it sounds like he’s concerned about “different ways to approach the game to keep it interesting.”

And I think BSD does this really well. Score-wise, it’s sorta an all or nothing game, but gameplay-wise, the lack of modes grants the player at least 7 different ways to stack the multiballs: Coffin/Castle; Castle/Mist; Coffin/Mist; Coffin/Castle/Mist; Or play them all individually. It’s a bit of a choose your own adventure depending on your skill and level of risks you’re willing to take.

Owned WPT. It’s a Keith Johnson game, most notably is deep, and scoring is dependent more on how far you get into those modes. Unlike the (impossible) 72x (?) jackpot multipler in LoTR I don’t remember any absurd stacks or multipliers. At high 3s you’d have to be able to look past that low grade art and have an affinity for drops.

BSD keeps you coming back for one more game. 30 Million!!