My sister's Star Wars went four years or so with three young boys constantly trying to break it and it never missed a beat - not a single issue. Different thing for the day I brought it over for them. Flipper issues, traced to those dodgy fuse clips. Replaced the lot while I was about it, and never opened that machine for them after that.
Some DE titles are real classics - JP, Tommy, TFTC, Rocky, GnR all come immediately to mind- they seemed to have a golden era in 1993/4. Outside that period classics are not so common, and certainly after and particularly after they were sold there isn't a game in my opinion that seems to meet the overall playing experience of many B/W titles.