FWIW the freezing's mutual on PCem too with the same symptoms. I could only play it on a 386SX config there. Given the design clumsiness of the port (the whole using-320x200-making-jumps-a-risky-gamble especially), i'd almost blame the game...

Awww, that's too bad. So I'd rather stick to the SNES versions included in the Steam package, even though I like the DOS version more.

Mine seems to lock up randomly at last life around 8500 cycles and it gets more consistent if I increase the cycles beyond that.

Also I found out it also depends on how far I proceed in the game, so when dying in the in the beginning I can sometimes get to the retry/credit screen with 10000 cycles. Later on it just hangs.

When it hangs I can get to the credit screen by taking this jump, but its beyond me to figure out why it does not take it.

101AB:628E  C6D083              mov  al,83
201AB:6291  3C00                cmp  al,00
3-> 01AB:6293  7431                je   000062C6 ($+31)        (no jmp) 
401AB:6295  8BC6                mov  ax,si
501AB:6297  8706C8D0            xchg [D0C8],ax              ds:[D0C8]=0640
601AB:629B  A3C6D0              mov  [D0C6],ax              ds:[D0C6]=4041
701AB:629E  FB                  sti
801AB:629F  C7040000            mov  word [si],0000         ds:[00B0]=6868
901AB:62A3  83C602              add  si,0002
1001AB:62A6  89366AD9            mov  [D96A],si              ds:[D96A]=453F

@ripsaw8080: I'm out of idea's (tried the svn, regular, staging, loadfix, but the game bug seems consistent)

It appears to be a timing bug. Messing with that logic tends to cause glitches in the sound and/or video, so I opted for an "as needed" sort of workaround. Extract the attached program into the game directory and run it to start the game, then press the END key to clear any hangs that occur. I only tested when running out of lives; let me know if end of level hangs aren't cleared.

It works great, so by pressing END it flips the bit and then takes the jump ?

Nice 😁

EDIT: tested and worked with cycles=20000

ripsaw8080, you're a genius! 😁

I ran the game smoothly with 50000 cycles and both level transitions and losing the last life worked by pressing END, thanks to your fix tool!

Did you find the unlimited lives bug/cheat in level 2 ?

(for those unable to reach level 2: H3AMNSWR)

My JimPower does not detect the sound correctly. So the game starts and plays 2 seconds and then completely silence.

Sound output stopping after a short bit of playing is typical of a misconfigured IRQ. Try configuring your SB for IRQ 5, as Jim Power seems to prefer that.

It is on "5". There is no config-dialog. Someone wrote it should be "7" but no chance for "7" on my PC-Board.

You can try deleting JIM.CFG (back it up first if you want) and letting the game recreate it.

That does not work. I have checked out the issue.

On my system IRQ7 does work on SB but due to res-conflicts only for 2 seconds.
So I am sure that JimPower always switches to IRQ7 and plays two seconds music.

The goal is to switch the game to use IRQ5 on SB. It's a game from 1993 so IRQ5
should be possible if the autodetection fails with IRQ7.

I have to figure out, where the sound-settings are stored and changed.

The IRQ is the first byte in JIM.CFG, but the last byte is a modulo checksum which should be adjusted if you make changes. The game will not load the settings if the checksum is not correct. However, if the game didn't detect the IRQ when JIM.CFG is recreated then editing the config data will probably not help you.

That's pretty bad or a stupid behavior of the program. Is this part of the copy-protection?
Or can someone with dosbox working and IRQ5 Setup send it's jim.cfg. That should work
for me too?

Did some further testing on other systems. Soundengine seems to be hardwired to IRQ7...what a stupidity.

The game's SB sound works with IRQ 5 or 7 in DOSBox.

On my real-machines I had no luck of getting sound. Seems to be another "tricky" sound-engine. But it's obvious worth of getting it to run. Perhaps I can find a patch for that game. Perhaps in connection with a trainer...lot's of shareware archives to browse through.

I tested jimpower against seven retro-machines. sound worked only on ESS-Solo PIII/600 with disabled caches and PII-233 with yamaha audician32. Soundblaster, aztech, crystal all failed. I can use SFX on my soundblaster, but playing the game without the (fantastic) music...no!

I did additional testing...this game does only run on the authors equickment back in 1992/1993.
It does not run on any of my retro-pc's even when changing to other soundcards... I nearly put
it all that I have but did not found a card that the game is fully working with.

what's the deal here? I do not get it...