@mattsyd said in Setup Difficulties - Hit a Dead End....:

I don't mind which mame system I use. What ever is simpler. Very happy to go with a recommendation.
ON mame I want to setup street fighter ii, mortal combat, frogger, pacman or puckman, space invaders and a few other classics to start with.

I like lr-fbneo; it doesn't even have that TAB-menu and with proper romsets it "just works" in my experience. All control mapping is done by core input remapping in the RetroArch menu.

After wiping the sd card and setting up again, I now have a different issue. The controls on my simple usb gamepad ( ABXY LR and D pad) don't work as mapped in ES. N64 mario cart and puckman on mame are my tests at present. The controller works perfectly for navigating retro pie settings and menus, (and is mapped correctly in es config input menu) until I start playing N64 mario cart for example, all buttons work except the D pad. Can't move left or right.

Does the D-pad work in the (in-game) menus, and just not once the race begins? That's normal; Mario Kart 64 don't use dpad in the race, it need the thumb stick. Dpad work in the menus to select a race but once it start, it need the thumb stick.

I understand it has to be mapped in ES input config, and then again for each emulator too?
Perhaps again for individual games within an emulator too in some cases?

No, when you do it once for ES it should automatically configure inputs both for RetroArch and for the stand-alone emulators at the same time, too.

You can **re-**map the controls for a single game or emulator, but you shouldn't have to set them all up individually.