The game has good attract mode music jam sequence and voice sample..."Check this out."
I guess the update is for work that might eventually make its way into source code such as src/mame/drivers/nwk-tr.cpp or other files. Ville's recent work was other items (sharcdrc and MB86235 recompiler) when looking at earlier sent in entries.
iirc There was a long ago thread or a post explaining why Thrill Drive was able to be emulated first before the other games with that hardware. That thread is probably gone by now.