That could be true I have to look into it a bit. I may actually make a trip to the bowling alley in town just to see if I'm doing everything right on their pac man.
If you are using a relatively recent version of MAME you'll want to use the "pacman" ROM, which is the original Midway version that was released in the U.S. back in the day. When players came up with patterns and games started running really long Midway put out a ROM revision called the "Atlantic City" chip, which changed the ghost AI so the established pattens no longer worked. There was reportedly a third version called "Manhattan" but it apparently is quite rare.
If you are using the correct MAME ROM and the machine at your bowling alley has completely different ghost AI it is possible the bowling alley's cab has the "Atlantic City" ROM set, which wasn't uncommon back in the day so it wouldn't be surprising to still run across one today. In MAME there is a "pacmod" ROM that is identified as "Midway, harder." It's my bet that this is the "Atlantic City" version.
See page 25 of the following PDF for how to identify the different ROM set revisions by watching the attract mode:
http://www.lomont.org/Software/Games/PacMan/PacmanEmulation.pdf
