I think mame is the only option if you want some cometition, otherwise there will only be 1 or 2 competitors for certain games. About cheating, if you want to cheat, you can do it as easy on a real pcb as on mame if you really want to. But I expect a little gentlemenship from our group here

, and there are no prizes to be won either, so there's really no point in cheating.
Of course mame would only work well with the 2-4-8 way joystick games, unless you have analog joysticks, steering wheels, shifters, etc...
Screen photos would be nice for the highest score (if it's really high), for the average scores I don't think it would be necessary.