Thanks a lot!
I did it in a similar fashion. However, I didn't use a bat file (instead: give Launchbox just a fake file which does nothing). Then I setup Retrorarch with the correct commandline parameters in Launchbox. E.g. for Cannonball (prepare for some German screenshot incoming!):
Note the command line parameters: the third argument must point to the epr-10187.88 from the MAME outrun.zip.
(As you can see, I have Launchbox installed on E:\Launchbox - adapt to your installation as necessary).
My problem with the bat files was, that there always was a window opening of the command shell. The solution with using Retroarch from Launchbox directly works like a charm.
From the other two games I tried, Mr Boom is the easiest to setup. Just download the core in Retroarch and provide the following command line:
-L "cores\mrboom_libretro.dll"
Btw great game (up to 8 players) and Retroarch takes care of the gamepad mappings!
Cave Story (NXEngine) needs a little bit more of preparation. See https://docs.libretro.com/library/nxengine/ on how to download the content. Then use the following command line:
-L "cores\nxengine_libretro.dll" "E:\LaunchBox\Emulators\RetroArch\downloads\Cave Story (en)\Doukutsu.exe"