If you run the program in a debug-enabled version of DOSBox, it might show you which specific file the program is trying (and failing) to access. You might then be able to rearrange your DOSBox mountings appropriately.

But first, your screenshot (namely the "C:\>") suggests you are mounting the game's directory as drive C, which often causes problems. You should mount the game's parent directory as C instead (i.e. "mount c c:\games" rather than "mount c c:\games\bb" or whatever).

It works if you boot real DOS in DOSBox. The game's interpreter is trying to open its data file with an FCB, and the filename contains wildcards. Apparently it's a rarely used feature of FCBs to combine a search and open in one function call. I suppose this was done to make the interpreter more generic across multiple game data files. Doesn't seem worth the effort to implement the feature when this may be the only game to ever use it. As a workaround you can run the attached program in DOSBox where the game is installed; it will start the game and change the wildcards to the known characters of the data file name.

Jorpho wrote:

But first, your screenshot (namely the "C:\>") suggests you are mounting the game's directory as drive C, which often causes problems. You should mount the game's parent directory as C instead (i.e. "mount c c:\games" rather than "mount c c:\games\bb" or whatever).

Yep, that advice never gets old, specially if you use frontends, which tend to mount the game folder as C:\ . However, that was not the problem, I forgot to mention that I also tried mounting the game folder as a floppy, which seems to solve a lot of issues regarding games this old (1985), but it produced the same error.

ripsaw8080 wrote:

It works if you boot real DOS in DOSBox. The game's interpreter is trying to open its data file with an FCB, and the filename contains wildcards. Apparently it's a rarely used feature of FCBs to combine a search and open in one function call. I suppose this was done to make the interpreter more generic across multiple game data files. Doesn't seem worth the effort to implement the feature when this may be the only game to ever use it. As a workaround you can run the attached program in DOSBox where the game is installed; it will start the game and change the wildcards to the known characters of the data file name.

Thank you, that seems to do the trick. Now I can save the Earth without fear of software problems 🤣

Thank you very much, seriously, you're a lifesaver.