Popcorrin, FatFingers, thanks for looking into this.
FF, I know the maps are not being applied because I'll open up UltraMap and load a "4 way" map. Then, I'll open up MaLa and try to play an 8-way game like Golden Axe. An 8-way map should load for Golden Axe and it should play fine, but when I play it, it will only let me move 4-way.
If I manually load an 8-way map in UltraMap, then load Mame from the command line (no MaLa), Golden Axe plays correctly in 8-way. I've tried this out with a variety of different games and it always loads the game with the UltraMap that was last manually loaded.