I'm building a Mame cabinet, and all is going well except for one problem.

I am using a Raspberry Pi with Pimame, and I have set it up so that it aitomatically launches Mame, and exiting Mame shuts the system down.

This is great, because it means that I never have to see the underlying operating system; it boots straight into the Mame frontend, and turns itself off when I've finished playing.

The problem is that the machine will also be used by my kids and their friends.
The way I have it set up is as 'kid proof' as I can get it. All admin buttons are hidden around the back of the machine, and the only controls that can be accessed by the kids are the game controls.

Unfortunately, this system has one weakness; the button to quit the current game and go back to the game list is also the button which quits the emulator and shuts down the machine.

It's all very well telling the kids to only press it once, but they still accidentally shut the machine down.
I admit I've even done it myself a few times. Sometimes there is a slight delay between pressing the button and the game quitting, and it's easy to think you didn't press the button properly and press it a second time.

The button in question is the one that is Esc by default; 'UI_cancel'.

I've looked, but I can't see a configuration option which allows you to differentiate between 'quit the current game' and 'quit Mame', as both events appear to be triggered by 'UI_cancel'.

Is there a way around this?