@mitu you're exactly correct. I ran dos2unix on the file and it works as expected. Thought about /r not being a thing in unix files 30 seconds after I posted.
No clue how it happened, both were edited in notepad++.

@Darksavior
Also I have experimented a problem about gpu_mem, when you set it to 256 (which i don't really think is reasonable for pi zero 2, but I have tried) then emulationstation is not loading, instead it is in a constant 104% cpu using state.

@dankcushions yeah I've run the lr-core before on pi4 (but on 32 bit). Doesn't quite have the power for it so was curious if the arm64 standalone would be any better.