@mitu got it, thanks! I think for changing emulation station this is a little too intimidating for me to try on the bartop since I have it fully working now without issues - a bit worried something will go wrong and my controls will get all jacked up between all the switches since as you note re-doing the emulation station input config with my ideal setup would regenerate the retropads and even though in theory re-doing it the second time would “reset” the controls I am worried something would glitch. Part of it is I count myself lucky I got all the XinMo stuff working on all emulators pretty easily what with all the posts I read in advance about people’s arcade controls not working for this or that.
But maybe I will at least remap the exit emulator hotkey since it seems I will be able to do that relatively easy across retroarch, reicast and mupen64plus and maybe get save/load working that way as well for retroarch and mupen . Seems a “low tech” solution for my start button to start a game dilemma would be just to create a label on the control panel for the button I have mapped to “a” that says “choose game.”
In time I may use my console-based retropie to try out the emulation station remapping but maybe I will also bide my time and someone will create an easy GUI for custom mapping emulation station menu functions only. Seems from some videos attract mode might have something like that so maybe someday! You guys are always improving this thing!
Thanks again for your time.