Oh man, those IRQ nightmares! Please don't mention those extended memory settings or I will go into my basement to look for my MEMMAKER notes on how to (maybe) get a game going...
Just boot one in your browser! https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos_games Yes these are real copies of MS-DOS games running in MS-DOS in a JS emulator in your browser. Some of them have crack screens, but some of them are running from magnetic maps of the disk, with original copy protection schemes intact.