I wish I had the time, access, and skill to go all out like you are doing. I am very pleased with my Donkey Kong MAME though, and it looks good enough for my needs. I may make it more authentic down the road if I build another full sized MAME cabinet, but that will not be for a long time now. Right now my focus is similar to your projects, I want to build a Princess Bartop for my girls, and right now it is time to gather the parts and go from there. I want to make it very portable, but not too small so that down the road when they will let me, I can finish the design in the fashion that I want. Maybe I can convince them to let me do a Ms. Pac-Man theme though, that would be a good compromise.
Anywho, I though Journey would be a good game for your list, but I remembered that it is 8 way, not 4. There is only a couple of levels that use the 8 way mode though, so it's easy to forget. I would suggest Qix, that is one of my all time favorites. I know I will get chastised for this, but Tempest is really not that bad on a joystick, if you adjust the analog down to like 30%, it can really play solid. And I love that you have Mappy on the list, another classic that doesn't get enough love in my opinion. I even have it on my Palm TX. Maybe I'll theme that with my bartop, the girls love that game as well.
Good luck on getting the Wife to let you put it in the living room, I barely got away with that. And my situation is that the basement is not finished, and I wanted to play this with the girls. They both have allergies, and all the dust (the house was built a year ago) and stuff is not good for them down there. It is clean, just not livable right now. I already have my dedicated P.O.W., Space Invaders Cocktail (was in the kitchen until this was done,) my POTC and Superstar home size pinball machines down there. But once the basement is done enough, it's outta the living room. But that is fine by me, that is what I want, I plan to have a pretty stellar game room. It should only be within a couple years.
Keep up the great work!