I figured I'd shoot this one here, but I have a real peculiar issue.

I happen to be using the Steam copy and have the EGA and VGA version both installed on a machine. I have another EGA only version as well and tested it with the same results. I just wanted to just run the program straight on its own without an emulator, and the EGA version is rather iffy on the text boxes. It's garbled except for some readable items on the menu bar. When it's running under an emulator like ScummVM, there is no such issue. What am I missing here?

FTR, I also have the other LSL sequels, and I did not run into such issue on any of their EGA versions. LSL 1 is an outlier somehow. As far as I can tell, it appears that the Steam one uses the GOG version (as some games are), and I'm not sure where my EGA-only' copy comes from, but it seems identical, hence the duplication of the same issue, and that brings me here.

It seems I'm forced to use the emulator for this one if I'm gonna get any use out of it, which is kind of tragic.

So you're trying to run this in straightlaced DOS instead of DOSbox?

Basically.

Then it's probably a matter of video mode issues at that point.

The video itself is fine. The text in the text boxes are not.

It could only be remedied so far with an emulator, which I was trying to avoid.