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Getting rid of CD Check on Asphalt Duell (Mini Car Racing)

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First post, by gag2000

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Hi everyone,

I have an old game called Asphalt Duell
https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Asphalt_Duell

I would really like to play it together with my son. Unfortunately, this game does not have a proper installation process – it runs directly from the CD-ROM. In my case, I am using an ISO image of the original CD.

I wanted to improve the game using dgVoodoo2, mainly to be able to run it in fullscreen mode and with better scaling. Sadly, this does not work as expected. As soon as I copy the game to my hard drive (so I can place the dgVoodoo files into the game folder) and try to start it, the game tells me to insert the CD, even though the ISO image is still mounted.

There is an English version of the game called Mini Car Racing, but that version only supports split-screen multiplayer instead of LAN. The good thing is that it runs without the CD check, but split-screen is not ideal because two players have to share one keyboard.

I already tried some guides that explain how to modify the EXE to bypass the CD check, but since I don’t have much experience with this, I couldn’t get it to work.
I have also tried to compare the executable files of Asphalt Duell and Mini Car Racing, hoping to find differences related to the CD check, but I couldn’t identify anything obvious. I have attached both executables in case someone more experienced might be able to spot something I missed.

Just to be clear: I am not looking to start any discussion about warez, cracks, or hacks. I own the game and simply want to enjoy this classic from earlier days together with my son, using the best possible settings and experience available today thanks to dgVoodoo2.

So I wanted to ask here:
Does anyone have an idea how I could get Asphalt Duell running with dgVoodoo2, ideally without the CD check problem?

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!

Reply 1 of 5, by Hoping

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If it works with a simple ISO file, then it does not have a copy protection. Maybe you can try to edit the ISO file and add the dgvoodoo files.

Reply 2 of 5, by dr_st

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Let me try to understand this first - when you mount the ISO and run from the mounted ISO - the game starts fine?
If so, it means the EXE checks the directory it's running from and behaves differently depending on the outcome.
The above suggestion - injecting the dgVoodoo files into a CD image may work in this case.

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Reply 3 of 5, by gag2000

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I didn’t try the simplest approach at first, but that worked perfectly. I simply edited the ISO with AnyBurn and added the dgVoodoo2 files, and now everything works.
The only remaining issue is that it always wants to start in compatibility mode.

If there is no copy protection, is there an easier way to make it run without loading the ISO? If that’s possible, I’d like to start it directly from the hard drive. Are there any tricks for that?
If there’s no possibility, that’s also okay, because the main problem has been resolved.

Thanks for the replies.

Reply 4 of 5, by Hoping

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Maybe running it from the root folder of the HDD, maybe like @dr_st suggested, it only checks that. But I do not think so. If you have more than one partition in your HDD, using a different partition instead of C:\ will do the trick.

Reply 5 of 5, by gag2000

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It doesn’t work directly from C, nor from a USB drive with the same drive letter as the mounted ISO, and it also doesn’t work with a virtual VHD. Thanks anyway for the help, but I’m glad it works with the dgVoodoo files directly on the ISO.

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