Try with machine=svga_et4000

On the player review screen press left/right to select a character, then up and left/right to select a color, after which pressing Return should proceed.

According to the .diz file in the same folder it's a free pre-release, not even the shareware version. So many things can be broken and well, they are. The graphical issues are present even on real hardware.

ripsaw8080 is of course right about the unintuitive interface but it does seem very, very poor quality software. I bet it was some kids effort so I'm not judging, only making the observation.

ripsaw8080 wrote on 2024-02-21, 17:25:

Try with machine=svga_et4000

Thanks! That seems to have done the trick.

ripsaw8080 wrote on 2024-02-21, 17:25:

On the player review screen press left/right to select a character, then up and left/right to select a color, after which pressing Return should proceed.

Yes, I had figured out that much on my own. I'm stuck on this screen:

It says press all player buttons, but only player 1 is human, and pressing either Return or space bar does not do anything (nor does any other key for that matter). I can press F1 and access the menu/setup screen, from which I can exit the game, but not progress further.

On the main menu, the "configure hardware" option has 4 keyboard icons -- presumably keys for each player, and the "button" key for player 1 is "S" by default, so press that. 😉

BTW, the game is using a register-tweaked variant of video mode 13h, which seems to be why it's not compatible with the default machine type.

ripsaw8080, thanks a lot for your patience and kindness! Much appreciated!

Huge fan of this game on the Commodore 64. 4 human players, 2 on joystick, 2 on keyboard in tournament mode.

I just tried this game in DOSBOX in expert mode. Graphics are a huge improvement but gameplay, at least in single player mode is lacking. One thing I noticed right away is during auctions the highest price you can sell for is 40% above the base price when the store runs out - on the C64 version you can drive the price up. The computer AI isn't as good as the C64 version. One of the computer players would not select a any land after 4 rounds. I played for 6 rounds before the game abruptly exited without any error message. I had saved the game on the 5th round but when I re-loaded the game the resume game function did nothing. This game is definitely unfinished and unplayable in its current state.

Norton Commander wrote on 2024-02-23, 18:52:

Huge fan of this game on the Commodore 64. 4 human players, 2 on joystick, 2 on keyboard in tournament mode.

I just tried this game in DOSBOX in expert mode.

Thank you for such detailed feedback!