@pierrem
You may upload new version of existing package to -devel, without being maintainer (joy of open source project ). The only drawback will be fact, that You won't be able to push it into -testing and -extras - no big deal.

Thats exactly what Pali did before council granted him maintainership of power-kernel (tanner was and is unreachable), and Mentalist Traceur did same for aircrack-ng (he is now maintainer - succeed in contacting former maintainer) and iw (he's still not maintainer, but fixed version was uploaded by him).

So, if You can't reach flandry, just upload Your patched version into repos, over current one. If someone preffer old, she/he can always force older version via apt-get.

/Edit

Also, SDLMAME package should be (IMO) replaced by dummy package depending on MAME, to allow auto-update and to decrease confusion.