weighted men, heated treated rods, goal design, and I don't think twister has split bearings...I don't know about the playing surface or strips that run down the side
but even if you have a Cyclone, which has weighted men, HT rods, and split bearings, it plays different...I had a friend who owned one and we played on it a ton and I can't believe it is only a weight difference...the table played different apart from weight
but as was stated earlier, you can learn all you need to on a Cyclone and probably on models further down, there would just need to be some adjustment to coin ops when you played in a tournament....when I first played, we didn't know any better and bought a lower home model and my friends and I got quite good using that table...there was a time I practiced on it 8 hours aday apart from play with my friends...
funny, it would have really bothered me had I known any better but I didn't and it was fine...there was transistion at tournaments but it didn't take that long
bbt