Did manage to find this thread, which kinda involves the same issue. The last post has made me curious.

Little Big Adventure problems

It's supposedly related to VIDECDD.SYS. I need to double check what the exact drivers are I'm using, but I'm pretty sure that's one of them. I'll just need an alternative.

Well, sadly, I tried the CD driver suggested in the MS-DOS for Games shortcut and added the appropriate commands for it. DOS loads up and recognises the driver and CD drive no problem. Unfortunately the same thing happens - no text, no speech, and a black screen on starting the first area. The driver is even included on the boot disk, which is OAKCDROM.SYS. And the device is recognised as mscd001.

Tried using regular DOS on reboot, instead of the game mode shortcut, but when I try to load the game I get this:

Not sure what that involves exactly, but I’m guessing it’s a lack of memory…?

Still no progress with this; just more experimenting. I've tried 3-4 different CD-ROM drivers, but none have made a difference. 😒 I've also tried about half of the video device options and none have worked. I either get the screen looking like this:

Or this:

What I have noticed though, is if the screen is like above, I still don't get any speech or subtitles, but the first area loads up. It's just unplayable. The VESA Compatible option is the only one that displays things correctly. It just fails to load the first area and locks up and there's no speech or subtitles.

This is the list of video options:

Progress …of sorts. Did a test based on another post I read. I disabled music and sound effects during setup and text works and the first area of the game loads up! So, it’s not an issue with the CD drivers in DOS, but the audio somewhere somehow. Not sure yet if it’s the music or the SFX.

EDIT: Music is perfectly fine. It’s the SFX that are the issue for some reason. Sound blaster options have never been an issue before in other games, so it’s very weird. I’ve tried the channels it should be and different ones for the various options, but I either get the same problem or cinematics don’t play and it locks up. 😕

Only other thing I can think of trying is getting my Yamaha sound card to work under DOS and try that. Maybe it doesn’t like onboard sound…?

Re-enabled my ISA Yamaha sound card and so far that isn’t fairing much better either with SFX. 😕

Fixed it! 😃

Once I got my Yamaha sound card configured correctly, I tested out various Soundblaster options for the SFX. The one that worked was Soundblaster Pro 2 and then the appropriate channels/config - 220, 5 and 1, I believe. I’ve still yet to test it with my onboard sound, but once I get a sound canvas or wave table, that won’t matter too much. 😊