Is it possible to map keys so I can play Fuse (Spectrum) games on my cabinet?

[uptown47]

Hi all,
I really hope someone can help me.

Last year I built a cabinet to (mainly) run MAME.

It uses Hyperspin and Rocketlauncher as a frontend.

I use an iPac keyboard controller to convert my button presses / joystick movement into keyboard inputs. These are all set up for MAME so the joystick is Up arrow / Down arrow etc and the buttons are keys "left ctl", "left alt", "space bar" etc.

I would love to run Spectrum games on the cabinet but don't want to use a keyboard.

I'm experimenting with Atic Atac first as I had some luck running that on the cabinet (albeit with a bit of messing about with me on the keyboard).

Essentially I would like to map the keystrokes I'm giving to different keystrokes for each Spectrum game. So, for instance, to start a game of Atic Atac you press "0". I would like to map the key "1" to "0" so that my existing MAME "Start" button would start the game.

I hope this makes sense.....

I've started Atic Atac and managed to get into the Menu and find the "Controls" menu but every 'key' you can change is locked to the "Retropad" (i.e. you can't just pick a key - there are a set of choices based on the keys on a retropad ).

I've saved a Game Specific config file (Atic Atac (Europe).rmp) under config -> remaps -> fuse and changes settings in there to...
input_player1_a = "a"
input_player1_b = "b"
input_player1_y = "y"
input_player1_x = "x" etc etc

But that made no difference at all?

I'm a bit confused as to how I set it up and wondered whether it was even possible?

Sorry for the long post and, if you've got this far, I would be really grateful if you could help me.

A massive thanks for any help :)