Thanks for the comments :) I haven't noticed any issues like that, but I'll check it out. Just in case though, you need to be quite close to the NPCs to interact with them - basically overlapping them. And to open shop menus, you need to push the joystick towards the shop front while pressing fire - possibly the emulator setup has an issue with multiple keypresses? You can also try keyboard controls, using arrow keys and space instead of a joystick.