I figured out why malvado crashed and the menu didn't appear: I removed all the joystick code (and the import for mod_joy) in malvado and replaced it by keyboard code, as a quick test to see whether this was the cause. Now, the menu appears!

But the keyboard doesn't respond. I used the latest packager, so should I use android scan_codes perhaps?
I need to rewrite my input system anyway because it's kinda ugly and complicated because it had to work with the WIZ / CAANOO and Dreamcast (platforms I never tested, and I remove support for these in favour of android). With the latest version, my hello world input test program doesn't see the keyboard anymore.