@pi_pilot Update:

So I got the system running in vertical (portrait) mode on my Pi4B, with a few tweaks booting from the Bookworm Desktop (not lite), and got GPIOnext running too.

First to GPIOnext for my dual stick arcade controller, I needed to install evdev which after a few goes got it all setup.

6 Button Controller setup is as follows

3 5 6
2 1 4

Works good for Hyper Olympics.

For EmulationStation I have to launch using the following launch parameters after exiting wayland to terminal (ctr-alt-F1) ...

emulationstation --screensize 1080 1920 --screenrotate 1

Once launched into emulationstation I went into the retroarch menu and set

settings->video->output->video->screenresolution->1920x1080
AND
settings->video->output->video->videorotation->270
AND
settings->video->output->video->aspectratio->16:9

Important! Remember to go back to the main menu in the retroarch dialogue and go to configuration and save configuration, so that changes you made are written to the retroarch config file.

It stretches all games to full screen on my monitor but I can live with that.

Performance does seem a bit better compared to the standard buster release of retropie.

New thread here:

https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/34969/launching-retropie-emulationstation-from-bookworm-desktop-not-lite-vertical-portrait-mode-gpionext

Now that I am back to playing with Wayland/Sway, I found the best solution is what @etheling was doing...using imv as the image viewer. The difference is that I am using runcommand-onstart.sh to display the loading screens so I don't have to mess with editingruncommand.sh. The key is to NOT name you launch images *-launching.png (I use *-launch.png) as this will invoke feh via runcomand.sh.

#!/bin/bash ROMPATH="$3" ROM_BN_EXT="${ROMPATH##*/}" ROM_BN="${ROM_BN_EXT%.*}" LAUNCHIMAGE="/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/$1/images/$ROM_BN-launch.png" imv-wayland -f -s full -x "$LAUNCHIMAGE" & &>/dev/null IMG_PID=$! sleep 4 imv-msg "$IMG_PID" "q"

[libretro ERROR] Error opening file: /home/thorsten/RetroPie/roms/psx/Destruction Derby Raw (Europe) (En,Fr,De,Es,It)/Destruction Derby Raw (Europe) (En,Fr,De,Es,It) (Track 01).bin No such file or directory

it sounds to me like the .cue is bad and points to a file that doesn't exist. you could either acquire a different rip or attempt to create a new .cue (see https://retropie.org.uk/docs/Playstation-1/#bin-only-roms)