I think there is no reference, it all depends on how you would like to code and if you would like to integrate your game into the existing Retroarch system. To integrate your game as good as possible, you could work with libretro. The whole system is based on libretro/retroarch, and thus it would integrate nicely into it.
Examples for libretro may be found here Libretro Examples and of course SDL is what you would work with then in C/C++.