C64 (VICE) RetroPad Configurations Issue

I’m having an issue similar to the one described in:

However, even after after removing all RetroPad and Hotkey configurations in the core options, it seems like there are still conflicts where pressing buttons causes what seems like hotkey behavior somehow.

On the game I’m testing with attempting to press fire (mapped to RetroPad B as is the default) to start the game returns to the READY screen. And if I’m able to get past that (by changing the fire button to RetroPad A), pressing right seems to pause the game. This isn’t happening on the standalone VICE emulator so I’m assuming this is due to some RetroArch configuration that I’m unaware of. Does anyone have any ideas?