@Dj-EKI map z to left trigger I believe

But... if you're trying to just prevent the message from appearing when you don't have a controller available, the easiest solution is to configure a keyboard as input in EmulationStation. When started, even if there's no controller connected, EmulationStation will skip the welcome message and go right into the system list.

@Dinsdale Your screenshot shows an error that happens during pairing in the Bluetooth setup - possibly a timeout during the process. Re-connection is handled by the OS, there's no RetroPie script involved afterwards - so I don't think that's the problem.

EDIT: you can try and pair the controller manually - see https://approxeng.github.io/approxeng.input/bluetooth.html, the Pairing with Bluetoothctl section).

Amazing! This did the job!

The PS4 DS controllers show as 2 devices - one for the touchpad and one for the actual gamepad, that's why you have 6 listed. There are some hints on how to disable this in this topic.
Also, please add the info detailed in https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/3/read-this-first when opening a support topic, it's easier to diagnose things.

Hello, I tried this with my Xin-Mo arcade setup and while it sorta made things more responsive in games, it ended up making some wacky things happen in EmulationStation. When scrolling through systems left-right it would skip over a system sometimes even though I pressed it once. Same goes for up-down in the game lists, it would skip games over as if it were double tapping.

Ok so a Xbox /Playstation type of control, got it. Thanks guys

If it's a generic USB Xbox clone, then it should be handled by the xpad driver. Can you run - from the command line - cat /proc/bus/input/devices and then post the output ?

@quicksilver Thank you very much and have a great weekend.

@quicksilver

I also remember that on original N64 hardware that if the analog stick was pushed while the game was booting up the crosshair/selector would get stuck trying to go one direction.

I also remember this, very annoying. But once my N64 joysticks were worn out, I put the analog stick back a bit to not have to press it as much forward to have it react.

I ended up rebinding all the controls through trial and error. Seems like there is no logic behind the labels. But now it works.
Also, turns out the erroneous mapping was for player 2 as well, but I could copy the same mapping to player 2 after I had saved settings for the core.

@backstander

I noticed the same thing, in the switch mode I had ghost movements and it all went away when I put the gamepad in windows mode.

@mitu Nevermind. That worked. THANK YOU SO MUCH!

I don't think the SD card capacity has any role in this, more likely the emulator versions are different on the systems you're testing. Reicast seems to have issues in the latest versions with controller inputs - configurations that worked before are not working at all right now.

@staller It has nothing to do with the controller type you are using.

Turns out that the dead zone was set too high.
When the joystick finally tilted out of the dead zone it had gone too far for the smaller motions. I set it to almost nothing in comparison to what it was and now everything is nicer to play.