@headrush69 Thank you sssssssssssssooooooooooooooooooo much headrush!
I have spent the last 2 days digging for this!!
My volume knob, It WORKS!

I literally created an account here just to thank you!

Glad it can be helpful for others!

Okay folks, I've written up a script to handle this exactly the way I described before.

It runs from the autostart.sh and watches /dev/shm/screen_manager.cfg for updates.
That way any other system process can create/modify that file and this script will respond by either starting the rom, or starting the dashboard.

Cheers!

https://github.com/coderkevin/mini-nes/tree/master/screen

Thanks for the info. Can't wait for my Pi 3 to arrive!