Well, the mistake was mine altogether!
As I said: I'm new to this. What I didn't know was, that I can't just create new folders in the ROM directory manually and than move ROMs into it. It needs the emulators to be installed FIRST. By doing that the folders will pop up automaticly.
Now everything works just fine.
Thanks for trying to help.
Uwe

I found the problem. I re-read the wiki page on network shares and must have missed the part about making sure the roms are not marked read only. After removing the read only attribute from the roms lr-mame2003 loads the games just fine.

@largetree Hi.

It seems you just messed up the mame2003 configuration. It should be manageable - even if, worst case scenario, we just delete the right configuration files. :)

It is not related to the EmulationStation controller configuration settings.

So, to confirm:

The controllers work well in other emulators? [Yes?] Do Players 2, 3 and 4 still retain the ability to move down in the same emulator? [Yes?] Can you not access that menu via another controller's R2 button, as player 2, 3 or 4? [No?] Can you not access that menu via player 1's R2 button, and then move as player 2, 3 or 4? [No?] Did you lose the ability to move in all games in that emulator, or just in one particular game?

Let us know. In particular, the last answer would determine whether we'd need to find the global settings file to delete, or just the rom-specific settings.

In particular, in your <rom folder>/mame2003/cfg , there should be some cfg files. Let us know what are its contents. Exit EmulationStation by pressing F4 (or login to your Pi via SSH) and run the following:

ls -l /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/arcade/mame2003/cfg

@obsidianspider yeah, bit this one was working with pi zero. Thank you

@BuZz

OSMC support is included

My mistake. I always thought RetrOSMC was installed by some non-traditional means.

@infocorn Answers 2 and 3 relate to the whole lx panel. In linux it is known as a panel not a task bar.

@rowjoo Universal xml scraper. It uses a pc to scrape then automatically transfers the info to the Pi.

Thanks for the info, I did a search but no solutions to my problem.

@PECONAUT

That would seem to indicate that it's not registering a joystick event at all, or at least not correctly. If that's the case, I don't think there's much that can be done. It's unfortunate, but third party console controllers are always in danger of limited compatibility outside of their own ecosystem.

This is not an attempt to boast but i got it up and running first time with no issues whatsoever - therefore all the info is there.

May i suggest you specifically target mame 0.78 and download a complete rom set for that, put them in the 'arcade' folder and use lr-mame2003 to run it - that way you should be able to get it up and running very quickly, as others have said the lack of info about your setup means it is hard to help you.

Pretty weird indeed. I re-imaged with the backup before I installed and this display issue still persists.

Any thoughts?

Solved: Seems as though the 3 port otg adaptor was the cause! Seems to be working fine now that I've switched back to the original single port otg that came with my pi

@GtBFilms I buy it. Really cool and fast!

@alexis-puska hello! could You please help me to anable rumbles on retropie please?? i have original dualshock 2 with usb adapter.... as far as i understand rubmles should work, but they dont... i wsitch to analog in option but nothing happpend...