@dankcushions My main worry was that the msu-1 file will get entangled with other files, especially if I was to add ,ore msu hacks, but this is more of my paranoia. I also thought it would be more tidy, but if it adds more clicks and I can't use lr-snes9x anyway, I guess I'll pass.
Thanks for your help!

@dankcushions I wasn't sure if it'd be worth the hassle of having to reset to head to be able to update again is all. if that's fairly trivial then I'll follow your instructions.

Hey @mitu thanks for getting back to me. It turns out the issue was not the wifi connection. I'll explain for anyone who might run into this stupid problem as well:

I'm working on a Mac (booooo) and when I opened the wifikeyfile.txt it opened by default in TextEdit.app. When I opened it and entered my credentials it looked a bit like this:

ssid="wifinetworkname"
psk="mypassword"

Unbeknownst to me, a non coder, it turns out there are two different types of quotation marks. WTF, right? See if you notice the difference between the two below.
Screen Shot 2020-11-04 at 10.17.37 PM.png

Yeah, unsurprisingly if you have quotation marks like those on the left like I did, when you try to <import wifi credentials boot/wifikeyfile.txt> it won't be able to read the text correctly.

The fix?
Go to the toolbar under edit > substitutions > smart quotes. Uncheck that option and you'll be able to type no nonsense vertical quotation marks that RetroPie will recognize.

Alternatively, if you open your wifikeyfile.txt in Sublime 2 instead you shouldn't have this bs problem. Seriously, I don't need fancy quotation marks here! I'm not writing a novel and if I was I wouldn't be using TextEdit.

Make sure you don't have a return below your second line. It'll be invisible if you don't have your text cursor on it so delete space until you only have two lines.

Sorry for the text dump but I figured this may save newbie like me a headache if they try making their own Gameboy Null 2 and run into the same issues.

To answer your question about the old version of RetroPie, it was part of a pre-made image that was recommended for the project, likely to save me the trouble of button config etc.

The Pi0 ate my SD card. It works, according to the test, but not really. I think I'm done screwing around with Pi0s. Every single time I try and make 'em work, I run in to stuff like this.

Thank you, going to switch to my working Pi3.

AHH the good old days where all it took to fix a console was a semi decent pair of lungs...hmmm me wonders if retroflag ever do a PS1 case if we'll be turning it upside down

@mitu [UPDATE]
I ended up purchasing another class 10 sandisk 64 gb micro sd card and flashed the stock retropie Zero w image from the website. On boot - got the same result. I began to wonder if it was perhaps just the fact I was using a 64 gb card. So, I purchased yet another micro sd card, this time 32 gb. I’ve had no problems with it whatsoever. It’s been running like a charm!

@Hankola yes mame2003 and mame2003+ will save high scores

As @rbaker said, some of them are not installed by default and you can use the script to install them. lr-armsnes has been removed in 4.4 since it no longer compiles and run.

@eladiopinto Thanks.

Forget it. Got it. Rebooting let me get into emulation station. Oddly keyboard would not work until after I set up a usb game pad. All set thx.

I checked in my network to see if the Pi would show up but it does not. Either way I get no wifi regardless on the PiZero W. In regards to the GBA, I forgot how the frame rates were on it lol but it seems to be normal. I will check up on a few more Roms on the SNES when I get back home to confirm if it's only a few games being affected.
Thanks for your input

@chipsnblip I've also tried with my iPad charger (5.1 volts at 2100 mA) and the same issue occurs with exactly the same repro steps.

This morning I tried a different distro (batocera-linux -- derived from Recalbox). Everything works without any issues on my PiZero W (NES, SEGA GENESIS, SNES). The only difference in my setup with batocra-linux is that my controller needs to be on the "D" switch instead of the "X" (my controller was not working in "D" mode with RetroPie). Maybe that's another clue to investigate. For the time being, I'll stick with batocera-linux since It Just Works™.

I will still be monitoring this thread as I am curious if anybody else is able to reproduce. I can't be the only one having this issue.

bringing this thread back from the dead, as i encountered the same issue on my pi zero. any updates?

@alturis it’s hit or miss. Most of the lr arcade emulators don’t run well. There are direct ports of fba and mame, but can be a tad difficult to configure them. Snes runs decently, but since the pi zero runs and older version of snes9x, you may notice some graphic glitches and sound effects that are off. Also there is some minor slowdown sometimes. Gba runs pretty well. Minor slowdown there. But genesis and lower run pretty much flawlessly.