Two buttons games needed three

[DBloke]

Hi, Cheers for all the Retropie simple frontend goodness.

I Googled about for an answer to this and did a search on vaiours threads
I run various Pi's and various controllers at different shows round the UK. (I will be trying the Pi5 when that's out)
I run the most recent builds of Retropie on them.
We have a lot of simple arcade games and have a major issue with ones that need more than one button. This is always one game per Pi
We try to use two button "NES style" controllers on them, two action buttons, start select
Games like Commando, Final Fight, Wrestlefest, Punisher want us to have an extra button (Y or X), but if I configure that button I have to lose the A or B button, that means we can't do menu things.
Also have the same issue with Master System games, PC Engine works fine
I could configure it so it boots right into the ROM, but sometimes we might have some other games on the card or have to do menu gubbins.

The actual question -
Is there anyway to have those two button games use A and B and not B and Y/X?

Thanks

[Freddy Foresight]

@DBloke any game can have an individual config. This is done via retroarch or config files. The main front end (emustation) is global, but once you've established your global settings, you can set per-game settings within retroarch . You need to make sure you have retroarch set to save settings on exit as basically its set to reset to a default state unless you tell it not to. If you have a list of games, its probably faster to learn how to play with config files.

If you have an actual NES style controller, there are various 2 button combos you could set up to access menu function.
Maybe move your menu functions to a dual button action (up and select or something).
Then keep the action keys generally free of menu functions. If you do this on global config (assign menu stuff to combos) you may find you wont need to do anything extra.

[mitu]

@Freddy-Foresight said in Two buttons games needed three:

You need to make sure you have retroarch set to save settings on exit

No, the proper way is to use Core input remapping to set per-game/per-core input remap, since the input settings are not saved in the RetroArch's configuration files. With remapping you can swap which emulated button is emitted when you press the controller's button (so A can emit A and B can send X or Y).

[DBloke]

Id have to do this the quickest easiest way possible as I have about 50odd to configure, also disable those pesky back to menu things

[DBloke]

Update to this, the first method worked, have other issues, but I have already seen some fixes ill try

[retropieuser555]

When you say menu things, do you mean access into the RetroArch menu when missing an X or Y button?

You can remap the controllers configs inside /opt/RetroPie/configs/all/ (think it's called joysticks or joypads) then edit the lines like "input_toggle_menu" to the a or b button so you can access that?

Assuming you only have a couple of controllers doing it once or twice would solve that. If you are mapping loads on emulationstation you could change the RetroArch.sh mapping file so when you map something in emulationstation it maps your chosen button to those hotkeys. For example button b being a reset hotkey, for button mashers that's a nightmare for me so I usually get rid of that mapping for the entire emulationstation -> Retroarch.sh mapping file.