Ok, so I've figured this out. I misunderstood how the hotkeys work. One key, typically select, is your "hotkey enable" key which is used in combination with whatever other key you assign to "exit emulator" or "toggle menu". And for some reason in the GBA configuration, my start key was being called ...

I've been trying to edit this file (/opt/retropie/configs/gba/retroarch.cfg) to allow me to exit the gameboy emulator/bring up the retroarch menu with the button combos that work in most other Retropie emulators (start+select, and I think the other is select+y). I found the section that's for bringi...

Picture!

I definitely prefer the aesthetic/layout of the (original) GBA over any other option, and I'm going to try to make this as simple as I possibly can. I'm completely omitting all of the cartridge/microSD stuff, and skipping the speaker in favor of the audio jack, since 95% of the time that's what I us...