VisualBoyAdvanced on an Ancient Macbook

I'm trying to set up VBA on a Macbook running OS X (Lion, and yes I know it's ancient).
I downloaded a version of VBA that is supposed to work on this version, but when I click on it's icon in my dock, it just bounces.
Any tips as to how to get this fixed? (Other than buying a new laptop?)

Well, assuming that you can get a hold on a copy of Windows XP, you could install a virtual machine to play the emulator, like VMware.

Run it on the terminal/konsole to see if it shows any errors.