1. The problem with Life and Death 2 under Dosbox seems to be twofold. First, the nifty copy protection of the original version believes the hardware configuration was changed when executed under Dosbox, making it impossible to start the game.

Second, the cracked version floating around on the net can be actually executed under Dosbox but is obviously configured for Soundblaster which doesn't work well with the Dosbox Soundblaster emulation (which is incomprehensible to me since the emulation seems to be pretty much perfect).

2. The solution, which is some kind of workaround, is to combine the original version and the cracked version and use PC Speaker real sound instead of Soundblaster.

The original, uncracked version (which some believe to be availabe at Home of the Underdogs 😉 ) must be installed by mounting the directory to install from as floppy (mount a -t floppy ...) and executing the installer. You also have to choose PC Speaker as sound output and expand graphics to XMS/EMS (very important as we will see later).

After finishing the installation you have to overwrite the LD2.exe with the cracked version which may be found by an appropriate google search.

3. Now you can play Life and Death 2 with sound and operations. The graphics must be expanded to XMS/EMS because this is the option expected by the cracked LD2.exe. The only price you have to pay which made me call this a workaround is that you have to use Realsound instead of Soundblaster. Since the samples are well recorded and the Dosbox PC Speaker emulation is very good this is a small price.