I just started a new game, and having played this game many times before, I retrieve the bonsai as soon as I leave the cave. The problem is when I throw a rock, the hero's animation freezes in a semi crouched position. When I try to walk he will glide along for a second before the game crashes. Has anyone else experienced this? Also I tried running the game as an administrator but my saves were not accessible (not really a problem since I just started) and there was no voice over. I'm used to playing with the voice acting and definitely won't enjoy the game as much without it.

What speed is Dosbox running at when you have the game loaded? If it's at auto/max then you're having speed issues. The original installer left Dosbox at that setting; there was an update a little while later that set the games' speed to a fixed 10,000 clock cycles.

Does the animation freeze only at the screen where the bonsai bush was? or does it freeze in a different screen? I have come across this same glitch but it only happened at the bonsai bush screen.

So far it only happens at the bush. I was able to throw rocks and daggers with no issues in the monastery. Where can I find and adjust my DOSBox speed?

It isn't just the bonsai bush - crashing when you slide down the path is one of the well-known speed errors.

Run the game in a window so you can see the Dosbox status bar at the top.

Alternately, if you still have the install file, check to see which version it is. If it's 1.0.0.19 then it'll have given you the earlier, non-speed limited setup. If it's 1.0.0.21 (or later) then it should be configured to limit the clock cycles.

I used to have that problem when I played at that part. What i did was throw an extra rock directly above the hero so his animation would turn back to his normal one and then that would do the trick.