@mitu
Ah ok.
Yes I meant simply a hard link but didn't realize it wouldn't work due to crossing over to a separate filesystem.

OK, here are some final words:

I tried reinstalling Daphne and Ports emulators, which did nothing I wiped the SD card and started over.

After that, I attempted an experiment: with the RPi shiny and new, I changed the resolution with Raspi-Config and rebooted. The EmulationStation never came back. Apparently, in my case, changing the RetroPie resolution is a death sentence. For any reason, you'll never see your ES again.

Case closed.