I'm positive on this. If I've gotta go hook myself up to MAME again, I will to verify, but I'm pretty sure this is off.

I just found out that they added an option to stretch the screen with the patch.

I can't believe some of the stupid decisions that are made (from programmers thru to testers) when it comes to some elements/features in games, especially with regards to issues such as this, considering they work with video/tv.

The first version they force the aspect and make the screen smaller than it needs to be, and the update allows you to screw up the aspect ratio.

The most common sense option is a scale to height (keep aspect).

Once again the original XBLA UMK3 got this right. Is it really that hard for them to have a quick look at previous versions and see what worked/didn't work.

The consistently flawed history of this franchise should be enough to answer that question.