This one is so strange because I never had any problems getting these to run on PCs in the past.

Basically, I built myself a "all-round" Pentium 75 for pretty much every DOS game under the sun until 1995-1996. By disabling cache, I can slow it down sufficiently to make even old Sierra games run correctly. So far I've tested 70+ games and not a single problem ... until Battle Isle came around.

Battle Isle 1 + expansions + 1914-1918: they all show graphical glitches after the Bluebyte logo and crash during the first round of combat when bullets come flying
Battle Isle 2: just dumps me back to DOS immediately

What I tried:
- minimum of stuff loaded (just HIMEM, EMM386 with files and buffers set high enough + XMSDSK to set XMS to 4MB to avoid compatibility issues)
- I tried original disk version, CD version, another CD version, abandonware versions - all give the same problem
- I tried using a DOS 7 (Windows 98) boot disk - same problem
- disabling any sound

I'm frankly at a loss. It may be a compatibility issue with the Cirrus graphics chip but considering how widespread Cirrus was, this seems odd.

Anyone have any idea? It's odd that both Battle Isle games act up like this since I suspect they run on very different engines.