Two player arcade cabinet - when two players play we get thrown out of game?!?!

[Wyluli]

Question for all you leet Mamers out there...

I have a computer in an arcade machine running Mame (dos version) with Mamewah as the front end.
The arcade machine has two 8 way sticks and 6 buttons for each player.  There is also one 4 way stick in the center.
I'm using an IPAC straight out of the box with no modifications to connect the controllers.
I also have VirtuaNES and a couple other console emulators set up to run with Mamewah as the front end.


Everything works great until we play a two player game.  When we fire up a two player game (either in Mame or any of the console emulators) and we start banging on buttons etc. we get thrown out of the game and taken back to windows (or a windows "window" will come up with some message, etc.)

As a test I tried setting up my controls in VirtuaNES (outside of Mamewah, just in the emulator alone) and made sure the player one and two controls were different.  I then fired up VirtuaNES without Mamewah and the same thing happens.  We hit a certain combo of buttons and get thrown out of the game....

What gives?   
How can I beat my mate at games if the stupid OS keeps rearing it's ugly head!  Please help!   

[DaveMMR]

I think the default ESC code for the I-pac is Start1+Start2 at the same time (Start1 is the shift). You're probably doing something along those lines to quit the emulator.

Do this: start the game and try to replicate it by using combinations of the shift button (Start1 default) and every other button and see which combination is giving you an issue and then change your I-pac settings.

[Wyluli]

Thank you for your response.  Strangely, it doesn't seem to happen with the start one and two buttons (that is the code for ESC as you said tho).  It happens when hitting just regular buttons 1 and 2 (which are to kick or punch etc.) and using the joysticks.... 

 

[SavannahLion]

Player 1 buttons 1-4 map to left ctrl, alt, space and shift. If you're punching ctrl+alt and second player hits a button you might hit upon a hot key combo that would dump you out. Try reprogramming the Ipac to not use ctrl, alt or shift as the key then remap your emulator then repeat your tests.

[Malenko]

probably windows sticky keys? hit left shift 10 times quickly, ALT works too. turn those off and you might be ok.

Or take a screenshot of the message so we can figure out what you are talking about