Hey all...
After combing through this thread and being about ready to pull my eyes out with a spoon after all the tried and failed solutions to getting this game working, I FINALLY managed.
Even better, as best I can tell, EVERYTHING works as it's supposed to (even the stupid deck editor which was never willing to behave for me).
Even though most of the suggestions here didn't fix my issues specifically, I wanted to give a little back for everyone trying to help others out and figured I'd drop a few bits in here that might help the next person who comes along.
1. Yes, Home of the Underdogs has moved. You can find MtG on their site at this link: http://www.the-underdogs.info/game.php?id=1550
When I tried, the direct download sent me to a wrong page after entering the code, but the torrent download did work perfectly which I snagged with some old version of bitcomet or something.
2. After having no luck whatsoever with that version working any better than my flawed CD versions, I checked around and it turns out you can actually get Virtual PC 2004 (or 2007 for that matter but I just grabbed 2004) for FREE. No longer a timed trial, MS actually just made 'em 100% free for the downloading. You can get to them here: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtualpc/default.mspx
Now it's pretty easy to get that set up really - just run the installation. You will need a version of windows to install however, either owning the CD and serial for 95/98 or *ahem* "finding" one I suppose would work too. Anyways, once Virtual PC is running, put a windows CD in a CD drive, and on the "CD" menu, select to use that drive and then boot the virtual PC from it and run windows setup. It takes care of the rest and nothing was very hard to figure out.
One big tip though is that once you've got a virtual windows running, you can add "shared folders" by using the virtual PC console's "settings" menu. Add a folder somewhere that's easy to find (from your 'real' PC) and just unzip any files you'll be needing to sub-folders there. Makes transfering them to the virtual machine a snap.
Finally, I did end up just using the original CD's for all 3 games (MtG, then Spells, then Duels) and then patching up with the Manalink 132 patch.
Works flawlessly so far and even seems to be playing movies and such just fine -even including using the tutorial properly with the interface and whatnot.
Since I have no one here to LAN play with, multiplay is the only part I can't verify, but I suspect it would work fine if I could test it.
Sorry it got so long winded, but I was really happy to have it working and figured if any bit of it helps someone else too, so much the better.
Happy dueling!
-Kitty
