I don't see how TAF and TOM are in the top 10 when CV and ACDC-LE are out of the top 10.
TOM is enormously repetitive. Shoot the outer loops. Hammer the trunk and let the timers expire. Start trunk mutliball. Now you're in wizard mode. The game is the same for me almost every single time (I own TOM and am currently repairing it). I get trunk multiball, midnight madness, and the theater award, and then spend the rest of the game going for illusions and trying to get trap door extra balls. I don't think I've ever gotten all illusions completed before completing the other three main objectives.
The game is not programmed fully either. TOM's main multiball mode has nothing going on at all. You hit the trunk for a jackpot and then shoot the trunk to rotate the trunk back again. Look at the multiball modes in something like MM. Where you have trolls running, stacked madness modes, ability to hit the castle, and even castle multiball with its changing lanes for jackpots. And the wizard mode on MM has multiple stages and it's in multiball. TOM's multiball modes are uninspired and bland compared to almost all other A-level pins.
TOM's wizard mode? Obviously not finished. Grand Finale is awful when you first reach it. Everyone has the same reaction. "That's it?". I was shocked that that was the final mode. Single ball, hit any shot you want on the playfield, and you get the same jackpot callout over and over. "50 million!" Unfinished worked of course just like the moving tiger saw, center post, and other parts on the cabinet.
Comparing Grand Finale to Join the Circus or Battle for the Kingdom shows just how abandoned TOM was during its design phase for the modes. It is maybe the weakest wizard mode in all of pinball. Easily the worst that I've played. That fact that a game with such incomplete hardware and software is in the top ten greatest machines doesn't exactly speak to the quality of pinball machine design compared to other gaming hobbies. I can't believe that there aren't a dozen better pins than TOM.
Boston, MA
Beauharnois
I like the "Phantom Flip"
Villejuif
