@ddoubleeasy try expanding your file system in raspi-config and reconfigure your input in emulation station.... maybe the hotkey got messed up

Wow, I posted this question 3 years ago, and never responded to anybody's suggestions... my bad! The solution to my problem was embarrassingly stupid and simple. Retropie had copied all the roms over from my usb drive, and this filled up my micro sd card to a point where there just wasn't any room left to save game data. THAT is why I kept seeing "task failed: saving state".

Hopefully this is helpful to someone.