Its always the last thing. Must have had some kind of hardware issue. reflashing my ssd has solved any issues. no idea what the original cause was. Some random little glitch is my guess. I was trying to avoid reflashing because of how far along I was in config, but backed it up and restoring it now that the controllers are all working. Thanks for attempting to help me h2805270, i appreciate it.

@wsamael I had problems with the SSD in the Nespi 4 but slightly different, I assume though because I use Attract Mode not Emulationstation. Maybe it is the same problem though. Games showed up ok for me, but the romlist is on the SD card so it should. Scrolling through it, so loading media, would be slow then freeze for a decent time before coming back. I followed the guide below and it fixed it for me, maybe it might fix your issue too?

https://www.reddit.com/r/RetroPie/comments/i9f45b/retroflag_nespi_4_ssd_boot_slowness_and_workaround/?utm_source=amp&utm_medium=&utm_content=post_body

@rtarroyo BTW

The internal switch is turned on to safe shutdown and im running the latest version of Retropie, installed it today