this game has been distributed as "abandonware" since at least 1996, version 1.5
I recently bought an original disk of it, which is also version 1.5

Do the EXEs match? NO WHY WOULD THEY

@foone the real question is

were they too lazy to version it

or the abandonware version got cracked

I don't think this is a crack. it looks like they made an actual change, and these are just two different "version 1.5"s

so one of the first things it does is call FUN_1000_40e0, and in the abandonware version, if that fails it immediately dumps you to DOS

in the fresh-disk version, it instead calls a function that prints an error and then quit

okay I think what it's doing is checking the config file, which determines what soundcard/input devices to use. the 1993 version prints "run setup.exe first" when you run it without a config file, and the 1996 version just...doesn't run?

oh, no, it's weirder than that. the 1996 version DOES print "run setup first", and the 1993 version just hangs forever

so that's a bugfix, I think.

I'm going to ignore this rabbit hole any further

the amount of work still on my TODO for this game is massive, I can't be tracking down bugs that have been fixed for three decades

mov AX,0386h

sure, set AX to 902 when you're running on a 386, that's fine. why not?