Battle Tank and Spartan X both freeze at start in MESS, while they should not, as the video shows... that video is also at the nesworld link I posted before, so I had checked before working on the dump wink
in particular, I had noticed the glitches in DK but I don't known why it's glitched in the video: I'd guess random data in VRAM or WRAM at reset vs. deterministic values in emu (just a blind guess though)

anyway, the last 5 games in MESS had completely glitched title screens (which is not the case on real cart, as the video shows) + Popeye was not loading at all.
both problems were due to missing mirrors of the 32KB PRG data up to 256KB. Now title screens are correct and Popeye works smile

what puzzles me a bit is the lack of music. might be that only the lower 2MB or 4MB of RAM gets bankswitched and not the whole cart...
I plan to look at Super Buster Bros. as a comparison, since apparently this cart uses the same sound engine, but I dunno when I'll have the needed motivation