I think the problem is that you’re writing the RetroPie image to the SD card when you should be only writing the NOOBS image (if you’re booting from noobs). I’m not sure whether the SD card has any effect on it, but I imagine it doesn’t. If you indeed got the old SD card to work using this method, I would be surprised, assuming you did it from boot. I would try the kosher way. I actually just formated my Pi last night to convert it to a full-time RetroPie machine, but I did it the recommended way. If there isn’t a real reason that you want to write the RetroPie image to your SD, I would avoid it.