gpsp & VisualBoyAdvanced

I found a list of emulators in a post on OESF. I started with gpsp the same way as I did with snes9x, put the bios in the rom's directory, started gpsp - I got the menu, I could use the arrow keys, but couldn't use return (or ok or whatever starts a rom). Cancel did not exit the program, the only way to stop it is killall gpsp via ssh. I also tried to start a rom from command line, but then I got a nonreponsive black screen. Now I had to kill opie inorder to stop gpsp.

Then I tried VisualBoyAdvanced (VBA). Installed it (with -force-depends), I used a similar script to the one I used with snes9x...
and voilla, vba runs, a bit slow, no sound (If I enabled sound it came out statering) - but playable.
I needed to tweak a little bit with ~/VisualBoyAdvance.conf. I switched the arrow keys directions, return did not work so I changed select to Q. I tried playing with the various switches to improve performance but I had no luck there.