The RetroPie image doesn't fit in just 1 partition. It's based on a Raspbian Lite image, which has 2 partitions - one for boot (formatted as Fat32) and one holding the Linux installation (formatted as Ext4). So creating just 1 partition on a drive will not be enough if you intend to boot/start the RetroPie system from that drive.
You can start by writing the RetroPie image on the drive, then boot it once to run the re-sizing step, then resize the 2nd partition to a sensible size to hold a RetroPie installation (15Gb ?) and then create the rest of the partitions you want to have on the drive - one for ROMs at least and possibly others.
Do note that if you have a large-ish drive (4T or larger I think) that requires a GUID Partition Table (GPT) then booting from it is not supported by Raspberry Pi boot loader.