I’ve been trying to get the original 1987 version of Pirates! to run properly in Dosbox, but it hasn’t been as straight-forward as I had hoped.
I’ve got my version from gog.com, so it’s not some kind of dodgy abandonware release. I assumed that meant it would be easy to get it running in Dosbox, but sadly the game froze up soon after it started. It keeps happening on subsequent tries and it never gets beyond the first town, so it’s really completely unplayable.
Now after some digging around, we’ve found that running a utility called LOADFIX might actually help to resolve the issue. Just call “loadfix” before you run the game and it should work a whole lot better.
I’ve yet to try this myself, but I’m eager to give it a go when I get home later today. I’m mostly posting this as a reminder to myself, but I thought maybe it’s useful for anyone out there as well.
Arrrgh!
.