There have been two games with difficulty settings I have taken seriously. Donkey Kong 3, and as of late Arm Wrestling.
Here is my problem with both games. They both have different MAME, and Arcade settings.
For DK3 Arcade the settings would be what would be considered hard MAME settings. For MAME the settings are on medium.
Arm Wrestling it's the reverse. The arcade settings are on easy default settings. The MAME settings are on medium settings.
So it seems to me the settings are all over the place. Did the original person get lazy, and list all MAME settings as medium?