Another thing that will bump a game down the list is if it was designed by Pat Lawlor
Yes, the guy knows how to make a great game, but most of his titles are the same layout, just tweaked a little to make it a bit different

Yeah, somebody else noticed!! I have FH which has all the best of his shots IMO, and ditched TZ a long time ago.. ..

I originally bought the game I played the most during one year of school that was spent more in the pinny parlour than in class. Then I stumbled across an AFM in the local theatre and had to have one, then I bought a project game purely to learn something about them as I had to that date had no issues but was starting to wonder what I'd do if something broke.

After that I started looking for other games I liked in my youth, first being BH (and then following pinrepair.com for all the mods) which lead to interest in system 1 and 80 games, and after that I started just finding games at dealers that seemed interesting and giving them a bit of time to see if they seemed worth having.

Aside from that, I fell in love with BBB on pinmame, which as mentioned is a great way to get a feel for the theme & sounds of a game.