-- actually I only thought it did ignore above.

Switched to Batocera (ironically the same [[EXACT TO THE LETTER!]] configuration settings I was using found the recalbox wiki for setting up smb over a wired network that didn't work, worked [[EXACT TO THE LETTER!]] on Batocera.

-- HACKED --
since none of the above worked, adding a custom.sh script didn't launch more over the S99custom didn't even load either! I moved to more drastic measures, luckily there was just enough information to access a log file of the boot process that somewhat showed me the way.

Step 1: mount -o remount,rw /
Step 2: nano /etc/init.d/S14migrate ( didn't much care which script it was, I'm using a battering ram here not a feather duster, as long as it launched at boot and was before the launch of emulationstation / recalbox I had my victim )
Step 3:

# Run this script on startup only
if [[ $1 != "start" ]]; then 
  exit 0
fi

# hack mount
mount -a

Inserted mount-a below the if statement.
Step 4: patted myself on the back for being cleaver, and now consider the wiki useless information.

@zetof first link I've already stated failed, nice Youtube link but I don't speak French. I'm guessing you didn't get past the paragraph TLDR.

@Pitch64 indeed, as stated wiki link is of no earthly use, when I followed the tutorial it more or less ignored that I'd even touched the /boot/recalbox-boot.conf it's more or less two steps.

Step 1.
Change the sharedevice=NETWORK

Step 2. (in my case)

attempt 1: sharenetwork_smb1=ROMS@192.168.1.200:/RAID/Roms:username=<redacted>,<redacted>=recalbox,vers=1.0

attempt 2: sharenetwork_smb1=ROMS@192.168.1.200:/RAID/Roms:username=<redacted>,<redacted>=recalbox,vers=2.0

attempt 3: sharenetwork_smb1=ROMS@192.168.1.200:/RAID/Roms:username=<redacted>,<redacted>=recalbox,vers=3.0

attempt 4: sharenetwork_smb1=ROMS@192.168.1.200:/RAID/Roms:username=<redacted>,<redacted>=recalbox
(this will just default to 2.0)

Either way these attempts 1 to 4 failed, I have no clue as to why they failed, considering I fixed the issue another way with near to the exact same config in fstab eg.

//192.168.1.200/RAID/Roms /recalbox/share/roms cifs username=<redacted>,password=<redacted>

It however does not automount at boot, which is the issue I'm trying to resolve, I'm pinking I need to edit something in /etc/init.d/ but I'm unsure as to what as the last advice I followed broke the boot sequence.

TLDR; how do you make fstab mount at start up before Recalbox starts it's interface, so that it has a chance of finding the files on my network?.

Firstly I'm new to RPIs I've just gotten my first one which was a PI5, I'm not however new to Linux hence why when ( https://wiki.recalbox.com/en/tutorials/network/share/roms-on-a-network-share-samba-nas ) this advise completely and totally FAILED! -- I resorted to the the knowledge I knew;

I put this into fstab;
//192.168.1.200/RAID/Roms /recalbox/share/roms cifs username=<blank>,password=<blank>

rebooted -- to a thunderous nothing, after relogging back in and discovering it wasn't mounted, punched it with a mount -a and did a file update in recalbox and all was right with the world.

however I'm not that much of a fan of doing this every time I want to run recalbox, is there somewhere I can make this mount automatically.

I did find some solution:
(DO NOT FOLLOW)
Yep, I knew that, I didn't want to put there my real username and password. The link you gave did work. Three differences from what I was doing: 1. The mount line on /etc/fstab uses "user", not "username" 2. I had to add the 'mount -a' option to nano /etc/init.d/S31emulationstation 3. I had to do a 'mv /etc/init.d/S31emulationstation /etc/init.d/S92emulationstation' in order to set that file as the one to boot from and mount everything. Solved! Nice Thanks!
(DO NOT FOLLOW)

Which completely borked to the system perhaps because it's old advice I'd imagine.

Any help would be appreciated.