There is an anti-cheating feature in the game which is triggered under DOSBOX : a protection against the manual modification of the highscores file PWORM.000. The file modification date is coded in some way in the last four bytes in the file. As DOSBOX does not support (yet) the time function, the file modification time does not match the internal tag when a new highscore is saved and the anti-cheating protection locks the game the next time.

The solution is to update the file with consistant values after you enter your name for a new high score.

The following values work :
-file modification time : October 21, 2001, 14:12:06 ( decimal POSIX value 1003691526 )
-4 bytes tag at offset 240 : 0x8371552b ( in hex )

With the following script in TCL run in the Pizzaworm directory right after you add your name to the highscores, the file PWORM.000 is correct with all your highscores saved.
After that, the game is fully functional.
Anybody can write the equivalent in VBS or any other language.

#
set ff [ open pworm.000 r+ ]
fconfigure $ff -translation binary
seek $ff 240
puts -nonewline $ff [ binary format H8 8371552b ]
seek $ff 244
close $ff
file mtime pworm.000 1003691526
exit
#