So I went and downloaded the 2.6 version from
https://www.petrockblock.com/retropie/retropie-downloads/
and that seems to work just fine, I guess I’ll stick with that. And aside from expanding the rootfs it works as expected right out of the box. Real nice work guys! I mean that.
Given that it works on 2.6 and not beta 4 on the B+ would lead me to believe that this specific image might be broken. That or whatever it is thats different with my setup is throwing it off. Looking through all the tutorials, everyone references the B+ would work in the same manor as RP2, but none of them were actually using a B+
http://downloads.petrockblock.com/images/retropie-v3.0beta4-rpi1.img.gz