So it's been strangely quiet in the world of emulation on Wii lately, and there's still one important area of classic gaming which isn't yet available, being the Arcade.

Has there been any rumblings or interest elsewhere about doing arcade emulation on Wii, or is it right now no general interest in doing such a project? Any word if Tantric or someone is planning any progress on any arcade emu?

MAME should not be a hard port, almost every system has a MAME emu...

There is one already. Wiibrew

SDL Mame is outdated and hardly works beyond the late 80's in terms of game compatibility, I was asking more if there is any talk or interest in updating the ports like SNES9X and FCEU

Thumbs up for that!

We need MAME4Wii =P

About MAME, I reckon I love it on PC, but I much rather using several different emus for each single arcade system than anything else, so developers can optimize them better, easier, and binary won't be that heavy.
MAME code, or MAME4all code which looks simpler to port "natively", should help to split that huge project into: a System16 emu, a CPS2 emu..., even thinking of reusing the awesome Wii64 MIPS dynarec, why not, a System11/12 emu for example. Well... that's my point, I'm very grateful for everything we already have thanks to scene coders. Just sharing a personal opinion ;)