Well, you just listed a one player 4 way vertical game and an 8 way two player horizontal game which is two extremes of the spectrum and both on the same cabinet equals one of them won't be very fun to play.
Especially on a smallish laptop screen.
The RPI is not a novelty.
The millions of units it sold plus the handful of dedicated distros for it
Prove otherwise.
One just needs to check out the gaming section of the RPI forums.
However, much like an old free PC it has limitations.
Its only $35
I'm building a dedicated vertical 4 way bartop.
RPI is perfect for this set up.
I'm also planing on a classic one player horizontal bar top.
Again RPI is perfect.
If I were to build a 4 player dedicated with 2 or 3 buttons each I believe RPI may even have this covered but not sure as I haven't tried to play the d&d games on it yet.
But for a fighting cab you'll have to look at final burn alpha to see if the games you want to play work.
I'd say probably not.
I don't play the fighters.
I know mk1 won't play very well even on the rpi2.
I know some of the neogeo games do play fine as far as I can tell when I was testing things using Mame .94.