The retail version uses a tweaked mode 13h, which appears to work fine. Sound Blaster sound also working OK. This is with default settings in DOSBox 0.74 and SVN.

Thanks for the feedback ripsaw. I had been having trouble with this game for a while. Though I think my issue was different than what I had originally presumed.

I had been just been retrying a previously installed copy in each DOSBox release. Today I decided to start from scratch and reinstalled with a current DOSBox. Post doing so it started right up. So I'm now thinking there may have been a problem with the installer in whatever prior release I had originally installed it with (perhaps related to some of the path issues effecting Xargon recently fixed in Ykhwong's build). Unfortunately I failed to save the problematic install folder, so I'm not clear on what the relevant differences are. In any case it's working now 😀.

The version I have is installed from eight 1.44mb floppies, but according to MobyGames there was a cdrom version that could be significantly different.

The floppy installer has a bug when you try to put the files from all of the floppies in one folder: it seems to work at first, but the progress bar keeps going well past the 100% mark, and the game files become corrupt. It works correctly when it has to pause for the next floppy (or next set of files copied into the folder mounted as a floppy).

My CDROM version works in 0.74 just as well.

I've got a CD version. It works if installed under .74. Still not clear what the issue with my older install was, but such seems like a non-issue now.