Arcade2TV-XR dual spinners in MAME

Useful Answer

Arcade2TV-XR dual spinners do not need to appear as two separate USB mouse devices for supported two-player MAME spinner games.

In MAME:

• Press Tab while the game is running.
• On Batocera, Hotkey + A can also open the MAME menu.
• Open Input (this machine).
• Assign the left spinner to the Player 1 dial input.
• Assign the right spinner to the Player 2 dial input.
• For games such as Warlords, map mouse1-X to Player 1 and mouse1-Y to Player 2.

Keep the spinner/trackball mixer enabled if the goal is to use both spinners and the trackball without repeatedly changing hardware settings. FinalBurn Neo / FBNeo through RetroArch may not expose the same dial mapping path; when support needs a known-good dual-spinner test, use MAME first.

If a spinner or steering-wheel attachment works outside MAME but MAME will not detect it, check MAME's own mouse settings before replacing hardware. Enable Multi-Mouse and set the mouse input type to Raw Input / Raw Data, then restart MAME and map the control again. One confirmed case recovered after removing a second-mouse conflict; the wheel then registered as Mouse Y.

Some games list two players but only expose one spinner/dial control in MAME. In those games, the second spinner may not map as expected because the emulated machine itself only has one controller input. Test with a known two-player spinner game such as Warlords before assuming the hardware is faulty.

Source Context

The customer thought both Arcade2TV-XR spinners needed to show up as separate USB mouse devices because MAME saw them as axes on the same controller. Support explained that Warlords can use mouse1-X and mouse1-Y for separate player dials. The customer later tested Warlords and confirmed that it worked perfectly; the earlier confusion came from testing a game that appeared two-player but only exposed one controller input. A similar Batocera/Raspberry Pi 5 thread clarified the support boundary: use the MAME menu for mapping and prefer MAME as the known-good dual-spinner path when FBNeo/RetroArch does not expose equivalent dial inputs. A later steering-wheel-on-spinner thread confirmed that MAME multi-mouse / raw input settings can resolve detection conflicts when another mouse-like device is present.