The game is trying to switch the system into mode 4 while Hercules graphics are active so that the BIOS will draw graphic characters in the B800h segment instead of regular text in the B000h segment. DOSBox doesn't support this trick and refuses to set mode 4 for machine=hercules.

It might work if you could load a PC system BIOS in DOSBox, as you do in MESS, but I think the lack of floppy controller hardware emulation, and maybe other stuff as well, makes that impracticable.

mmm ... so that waiting for DOSBox 0.75 or higher is more practicable .
And play this game in M.E.S.S. or PCE are the only two ways today , right ?

Thanks for your reply 😀

Is more than the title screen affected by the issue? I hardly think it's crucial to have that text when you already know to press F1 or F2 for number of players, and J or K for input device. CGA should not have the issue, so I think DOSBox is still quite a good option for playing the game today.

BTW, it's possible to load Magic Key in upper memory before booting the game, and it then thinks it's running in CGA... is that cheating? 😉

Sorry, I mean play this game "perfectly in hercules mode" ......

And, you mean "LH MKFILE.exe" to do so ?

Like so:

ems false
xms true
umb true
lhup
lh mkfile

You can get LHUP from here to work around an issue with loading programs in upper memory; and you probably already know that Magic Key works in SVN but not in 0.74.

That accounts for the milk in the coconut.
I tried "LH MKFILE" but the upper memory didn't decrease ,
Then boot that game crash DOSBox ...

Thanks for your information and the "LHUP"
😀

excuse me, another question here ...

Is it necessary to set "ems false" ? why ?
How does this effect the game ?

Thank you. 😀

I doubt the game cares about EMS one way or the other, being a booter. I listed all three memory settings to point out that XMS is needed for UMBs, but EMS is not needed.

BTW, I made a DOSBox patch for the issue that I will submit to the devs for consideration.