Thanks, i figured it was probably a lost cause, but i also figured that if anyone had already tried it, it would be here.
We ended up having the tournament over the weekend, it was just between my two oldest boys to determine which one was better at MK. They played 3 fights in each of the 13 MK games that we had access to. All of them were played on the arcade cabinet with the exception of Mk vs DCU, which they played on the xbox 360. It was fun, overall, my oldest son (10) won 22 fights, and my younger one (

won 17 fights, so it was pretty close.
good times were had, it is jut a shame we had to switch to the console to get that one game working.
we played:
Mk (MAME)
Mk II (MAME)
MK 3 (MAME)
UMK 3 (MAME)
MK Trilogy (Playstation Emulation)
MK 4 (Playstation Emulation, couldn't get MAME version to work properly, some weird issue with the W key)
MK Gold (Dreamcast Emulation)
MK Deadly Alliance (PS2 Emulation)
MK Deception (PS2 Emulation)
MK Armageddon (PS2 emulation)
MK vs DC Universe (Xbox 360)
MK 9 Komplete Edition (Steam)
MKXL (Steam)
As for Mugen, i haven't tried anything with it in a while. The last time i ran it was a few years ago and had some issues with it randomly crashing. I see there are a ton of MK games based on mugen, it might be time to try a few. I can't seem to find the right one though. It seems as is most of them that have all of the characters, also have weird made-up characters that I don't really want. So if you guys have any suggestions on good MK mugen titles, let me know please.