What's going on with my Pokemon emerald?

Hey! So I play pokemon through an emulator (Visual Gameboy Advance) and I just got the Pokemon emerald rom. So everytime i start the game and it says "press start" i do that and it brings me to the selections "new game" and "options" and i click new game but it just brings me back to the "press start" screen and so on and so on. Please help!