Joystick in C64 on mame

I'd appreciate any info on how to get the joystick working for commodore computers under mame.

I can select them in the menu, but they don't work in any game I've tried.

Please don't waste my time trying to redirect me to vice or retroarch, i'm not looking for an emulator I'm looking to get it working in mame.

Thanks very much.

It depends on the game. For something like Galaxian (using MAME's Cart software list) it'll work as is, For something like Pitfall 2, you need to load it as such:

mame c64 -cart pitfall2a -joy1 joy

Thanks, but I also can't figure out how to get the software list to work, I have to navigate to the files manually.