Pacman and the patterns with mame sent me down a hell of a rabbit hole.. The lack of consistency drove me nuts, well, it drove me to a MiSTer, which was a freaking godsend.. Then I started messing with 4 way sticks.. Then a monitor vs TV.. It got freaking expensive, but it has been a wild ride..
Gilrock, I would suggest if you want to use Mame, get the latest GroovyMAME with your favorite 4 way stick and a CRT if you can or an LCD with 1ms type of delay and compare it to the exact same setup with a MiSTer..
2 weeks ago I simply could not stand to play Pacman on my mame cab, it just pissed me off, that said I had it connected with KE72 keyboard encoder, running regular Mame on a slightly older TV via VGA, no matter what joystick I used, it simply did not compare to playing in on the MiSTer with a good 4 way stick, now however, I am using groovymame .227, good 4 way stick connected via a Jpac and a Asus ProArt PA248QV. It's a 24.1" IPS panel monitor I have rotated vertically and connect via HDMI, this setup is as close to the MiSTer as I could produce, I no longer hate playing Pacman on Mame..
I have not ever made it to a kill screen, but it is a goal now, I for sure want one day to have my MiSTer attached to a real CRT using the upcoming MiSTercade and making a run, in the meantime I can play pretty well on 3 different setups, the previously described Mame setup and a MiSTer attached via HDMI to a I-INC 28" rotated vertically and I can also grab the MiSTer and attach it to the Mame setup and play like that.. The 4th way, which will happen in a few weeks will be using a BitKit and a CGAtoVGA board attached to the Asus monitor. When I rewired my arcade cabinet with a JPac, I set it up so I can use it on a computer or use it with an arcade power supply and the CGAtoVGA converter and a Jamma board, pretty happy with the results, it has taken a lot of time and effort but it has been worth it.
-Zeosstud