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. This recommendation assumes you do not also require accessory USB data through the internal spinner USB board ports. On the original XR spinner board for which support confirms DIP switch 4 ON to enable that data path, mixer mode is disabled and the devices appear separately. Identify the installed board with support before changing switches; do not apply this limitation to XR MAX or Tankstick MAX. Re-map the separate inputs after a confirmed setting change. 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.