I own three pinball machines and recently built a virtual pinball cabinet running open source Visual Pinball (aka VPX) which is great. One challenge of getting into pinball is knowing which tables are "good". While it's true that different people will have different preferences, there are tables widely considered as "good" by the community. There's a list of best 100 machines of all time here: https://pinside.com/pinball/top-100. This is voted by the community and the majority of voters are very experienced players. You'll also see in the comments for each machine that many of the voters are current or former owners of that particular machine.
Since I have a virtual pinball cabinet now, as well as some friends who are pinball collectors with dozens of well-regarded, sought after machines - I've played everything in the top 100 (most on a real machine at least once) and IMHO - pretty much anything in the top 50 is worth a play, Also, my personal favorites are all in the top 50.
A few years ago I could have sworn that The Addams Family (1992) was the most highly regarded table of all time.
What appears to have happened is that between last time I checked and now, some great tables have been produced. I checked out a video of that Deadpool one and it looks amazing. It's good to see vibrant activity in the pinball space; I thought pinball had died off (again).
Yes, The Addams Family held the top position for many years and is still considered the best selling pinball of all time (although Stern stopped releasing sales figures ~10 yrs ago, it probably still is). The list was fairly static for a lot of years but you are correct that in the last several years a number of newly released pins have quickly risen into the Top 25.
Fortunately, this is not (IMHO) due to some corruption in the ranking or declining standards. It's because manufacturers, especially Stern, have really managed to elevate the design and playability of new pins to an incredible level and do so more consistently than in the past.
It's extremely difficult to create a hit pinball machine that's initially accessible, fun to play and yet remains challenging over time with deeper rule sets. Many of the top-rated pins are still the "classics" from the 1990s (TAF, CFTBL, MM, TW, etc). Today's best new machines are still being designed by some of the same people who perfected their craft over time (or those who apprenticed at their knee).
I own a Godzilla Premium and it's popular because it really is just a super fun game and stands head to head with the greats of all time.
That's really incredible. In an era where things I loved as a kid (including computers) are on the decline or falling into disrepair, seeing a resurgence of pinball, especially good pinball tables, is comforting. And new technologies probably help manufacturers like Stern produce better, more sophisticated, more fun tables, adding new depths of craftsmanship to this time-honored art.
But TAF will probably still be my wife's favorite table.
Since I have a virtual pinball cabinet now, as well as some friends who are pinball collectors with dozens of well-regarded, sought after machines - I've played everything in the top 100 (most on a real machine at least once) and IMHO - pretty much anything in the top 50 is worth a play, Also, my personal favorites are all in the top 50.