Cheat Engine

[Goat Engine]

I am running an arcade game on the MAME64 emulator and I'm running into a problem finding any reliable pointers when trying to use CE to manipulate options within a "cheat menu" in the game. Let me explain the situation...

Cheat Engine-> MAME-> Cheat Plugin-> Game

The game is Mortal Kombat 2, and I'm using a MAME plugin (not the built in MAME cheat, fyi) that brings up a UI for cheats that are in the game's cheat file. One of those cheats lets you assign different moves to the character you're controlling. For example... I select Reptile and then use this built in cheat to change Reptile's moves to Sub Zero's moves, and then to Scorpion's moves later on, etc... but I have to pause the game and enter the plugin cheat menu EVERY time I want to switch the moveset. (NOTE: For those familiar with Mortal Kombat, basically I'm trying to use Reptile in MK2 the same way he was in MK1 where he constantly swaps between Scorpion and Sub Zero's moves.)

MAME's cheat plugin has a hotkey feature, but without getting into too many details, will NOT work for this purpose of swapping different moves on the fly like I want. It only works to "enable" it, but I would still need to go into the menu to change the moves. This is where Cheat Engine comes in! I was able to find the pointer that controls that MAME cheat plugin "switch" in the UI and it creates the desired change perfectly after I've assigned some values to some hotkeys in Cheat Engine itself! Great! I had 100% success using Reptile with hotkeys to switch his moves on the fly! The only problem is, those pointers NEVER seem to return. It doesn't matter how long I let it scan, or how I compare pointer maps, etc... (I am not new to pointer scans) This is the only time I've ever found a situation where I can't get reliable pointers. Even if over a million pointers are found, they will ALL be invalid when I restart the game.

Any idea how to tackle this, or is it hopeless? All my other CE usage has been on normal PC games, so this obviously has something to do with it being on MAME and having to find a reliable pointer that's in a MAME cheat plugin.

PS: To be clear, MAME has 2 cheat options. One is a "built in" optional cheat menu, and the other is an actual PLUGIN for cheats with hotkeys that you have to enable in the plugin menu before launching the game the first time. I am using the plugin, which I suspect adds to the complication, using CE to manipulate a secondary cheat system...
Cheat Engine-> MAME-> Cheat Plugin-> Game


TL;DR
I'm trying to use pointers with CE to manipulate MAME64's "cheat plugin" instead of creating a new CE-only cheat from scratch (even though I'm aware starting from scratch would eliminate any need for the MAME cheat plugin's role). No matter how many pointers I find (in the millions!), they're all invalid the next time I run MAME64.