Just a thought: On a vertical cocktail, the number of playable games (ie, with screen flipping) is going to be about 120-140 or so, depending on how many clones you want and how many buttons you have. Searching really isn't necessary at that point, since most FEs let you jump through letters in your list by pressing left/right, you can get anywhere in the list pretty darn quick.
You have the same setup as I do. I use Mala.
That said, I have yet to build a list for only 1 player games (non cocktail/screen flipping), which is probably a couple hundred or more since I have 3 buttons on my machine. Searching might be useful then.