yea the default isint a big deal it can be changed. It would be nice for me as well if the default was classic but someone else who only plays st2 may have a differing opinion. Sticks and stones at the end of the day :)
One clarification: I did not compile from command line, I just used the package manager of the script. From the command line I used the script module install command just for recovering the situation without having to recompile again (that takes 4 hours)
I've been trying to keep up with the repository the last week or two but for what it's worth I'm on the road again and mostly away from keyboard for most of the next week. It might be that the Thanksgiving holiday is when I get some quality mame2003-plus time again.
On my overclocked Pi 3, I also use Mame2010. It is good enough to handle it. But that should not bother you. In fact, I have an third emulator for arcade games (fba), because there are a lot games working better. On PC, I just could use the newest version. But if your pc is a little bit old, then performance could still be a problem with some 3D titles.
@grant2258 Yes, I just wanted to report that after some testing yesterday. You were faster than me. ;) I can confirm that most of my samples work in mame2003 binary and mame2003-plus, but not in mame2003 from source; with few exceptions like Blockade that works in all of them.
Since there already is a pull request for this, I consider this topic as solved. Thanks for the help! (edit: as well as @markwkidd for the fix and @Headrush69 for testing.)
