I never played this game before and I'm not sure this is how it's suppose to be. When you die the grid in the middle changes size. I looked under mametesters and didn't see anything active for this so that's why I'm not sure if this is normal. I attached a snapshot of it.
hmm it looks like the grid in the middle IS supposed to change during the player death sequence, but after looking at the video below im not convinced this happens correctly in mame 0.147 (skip forward to 1 min 45 secs into the video....) --- i will submit a mametesters report