M_W, did you have any issue with framey/choppy animation in fullscreen mode?
I haven't tried fightcade on my cabinet but tried it out on my (lcd) pc. In windowed mode I don't get this issue, in fullscreen it's pretty obvious/obnoxious, it's like seeing a doubled frame from a few frames ago for a few ms while you play. Otherwise fightcade works pretty awesomely windowed, very impressive, I was just afraid of putting it on the crt cab if I couldn't get a 'true' fullscreen mode going. May have to try the dx9 renderer again.
There is definitely more input lag than Groovymame (even in offline 1p play) but it's still playable...just for local 2p I'd stick to Groovymame all the way.