given the 'fixed' image, I guess there is either some bug in the game here (or the image we have is from the same source as the non-fixed one listed?)

the question is does it crash on real hardware without the fix, is it protection, is the non-fixed one actually a bad / corrupt disk that's been dumped by multiple people...

I tried the NeoKobe image and that crashed in the same way, but for all I know they could have been converted from the same source too.

Also the magic selection does work on stage 2, but always defaults back to showing 'attitude' even when you have a different powerup selected (you can tell if you have argentina selected because you're slower but more powerful) that seems odd and doesn't match videos I can see?