Maybe you did not install the USB HID quirks for Raspbian? It is a known issue with the older Linux kernels and is described here in the section "Installing USB HID Quirks for the GamepadBlock" at https://blog.petrockblock.com/2017/10/10/tutorial-gamepadblock-raspbian/.

After much hair pulling and searching, I managed to find the solution to my issue. All of my ROMs except for Gunstar Heroes was a 0kb file. Once I replaced the empty files with good ones, they all played perfectly.

@LorThe3rd Hey, nice! Glad it worked.