Yes, it might be possible. You'll need to modify the autostart script in /opt/retropie/configs/all/autostart.sh and start either Emulationstation or the desktop - depending on your current TV connection.
There's a way to detect which output is connected (see this topic), so you can use something like this:

if (/usr/bin/tvservice -s | /bin/egrep 'HDMI|DVI') ; then # Start the desktop xinit else # Start Emulationstation emulationstation fi

If you have a bit of spare cash (~40EUR) get this: http://arcadeforge.net/Pi2Jamma-Pi2SCART/PI2SCART::264.html
or this http://www.rgb-pi.com/
These are dedicated RGB solutions for SCART TVs. No lag and 1:1 amazing picture quality.

@Haemogoblin Check out these topics for some solutions to some similar problems

https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/17107/ https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/17864

I just wanted to say...I love Lufia 2!

Oh sorry misunderstood. Well, it's a little bit all over the place. Before overclocking, one TV I tried had 720p. It had occasional audio cut outs. Another TV had external speakers and had a resolution of 1920x1080. That one had terrible audio drop outs that lasted the longest. The last one I tried was at 3,840x2,160 and was working better than the other two. The audio dropouts were there but they didn't last as long.

Since that 720p TV still had audio drop outs, I don't think that could be the solution. But I haven't tried changing the resolution for any of the TVs so I'm not 100% sure.

@bobharris thx

@roken Try adding these lines to /boot/config.txt

hdmi_force_hotplug=1
hdmi_drive=2

@zzz

Thanks for your solution, it's doing most of the job for me, but neither of my joysticks seem to wake the device back up. A keyboard stroke does wake the device though.

They are cheapo $40 amazon joystick kits, registering as js0/js1. Pi 3b+.

I tried OP's script, but it appears to not stay off for more than a couple seconds.

Were you able to find a workaround perhaps?

Figured it out, there was a custom runcommand script that was being ran during launch of each emulator. Once that was disabled, it fixed the problem entirely.

Thanks :)

It seems that tvservice -s outputs the info to egrep so I simply addedthe following lines to rc.local before exit 0

if (/usr/bin/tvservice -s | /bin/egrep 'HDMI|DVI') ; then /home/pi/hdmi else /home/pi/rca fi

Simple and neat!

Disabling overscan and setting my display to 1:1 seems to have fixed the issue. Not sure what changed as I was using the same settings all this time and it suddenly had issue playing the videos.

Thanks guys