MAME won't recognize 1P and 2P buttons in some games

[Funky_K]

Hi,
I'm new to MAME having just gotten a cabinet up and running in the last couple weeks.

Everything is working pretty good now, except this one issue.  In some games, the 1P and 2P start buttons aren't recognized.  They are mapped properly in the ingame config to "1" and "2" respectively, but they don't work.  If I try to remap them, MAME doesn't recognize the button press.  The 2 games I have seen this in so far are Shuuz and Crystal Castles.
I am running MAME v0.87 with MameWah frontend.  (I tried to use v1.06, but I was not able to get the trackball working in this latest release)

Any idea why the 1P and 2P buttons aren't recognized in certain games?  They work fine in most.

[Howard_Casto]

Some games don't have start buttons, nor do they use them.  Try p1 button 1

The two games you mentioned don't have start buttons.  Didn't you even look in the "inputs for this game" menu in mame?

[mahuti]

Yeah, it always throws me for a loop when a game says something like "Press Fire button to Start"

Of course I never read, so I start mashing the P1 button.