It's a known issue on the Pi 4, the controls in DraStic are not working properly. We don't have a solution at the moment, but we're looking into it.

Have you tried to see if the cable is working - on another device ? Are you using a proper power source for your Pi ?
Unfortunately without a keyboard or without using SSH is going to be difficult to diagnose this. Is your Pi Zero the W model, with WiFi ?

This topic should be closed, as I figured that it's not actually because of the keyboard. Comes out the RetroPie just freezes by itself on start

@mitu

ah ok - should be fine now.