Hi, I go tit working by editing the script the runs the emulators to make it use /dev/tty0. This works although the permissions are all a bit wrong and so I have to chmod it.
The system does have /dev/tty and the permissions for that is to allow everyone to read and write to it. So why it says it can not find it is a bit of a mystery.
ls -l /dev/tty gives the following
crw-rw-rw- 1 root tty 5, 0 Dec 10 23:52 /dev/tty
It is full package installed by imaging a sdcard. No customisations apart from the RetoPie. I installed it as per the Wiki instructions.