diff --git a/services/wolf.sh b/services/wolf.sh
index e06049f..00352b8 100644
--- a/services/wolf.sh
+++ b/services/wolf.sh
@@ -1003,32 +1003,24 @@ XMLEOF
             # it (copies to /opt/ti99sim/bin, symlinks into
             # /usr/local/bin), so use that instead of guessing the exact
             # build subpath.
-            # ti99sim's own Makefile.linux calls the old SDL 1.x `sdl-config`
-            # tool, which no longer exists — modern libsdl2-dev ships only
-            # pkg-config .pc files (and sometimes sdl2-config, itself already
-            # a thin wrapper over pkg-config). Confirmed live: without this,
-            # every sdl-config call silently returns nothing, so the compile
-            # gets no -I/-L flags at all and fails on "SDL.h: No such file or
-            # directory" — not a real incompatibility, just a stale tool
-            # name. A tiny shim mapping the handful of flags this build
-            # actually uses (--cflags/--libs/--version) onto pkg-config sdl2
-            # fixes it without patching the project's own Makefiles.
+            # ti99sim's SDL frontend (src/sdl/main.cpp) is written against
+            # the real SDL 1.2 API, not SDL2 — confirmed live: compiling
+            # against libsdl2-dev fails outright on symbols SDL2 genuinely
+            # removed (SDL_keysym, SDL_WM_SetCaption, SDL_EnableUNICODE,
+            # SDL_JoystickOpened, the old integer-index SDL_JoystickName),
+            # not a tooling/config problem a shim can paper over. The actual
+            # fix: libsdl1.2-compat-dev, the SDL project's own official
+            # compatibility package (libsdl-org/sdl12-compat) — real SDL 1.2
+            # headers and its own sdl-config, implemented on top of real
+            # SDL2 underneath, so the code compiles against the API it
+            # actually expects while still running on modern SDL2 at
+            # runtime. Packaged in Ubuntu's universe repo.
             if docker run --rm -u root --entrypoint /bin/bash \
                 -v "$GAME_STORAGE_DIR/emulators:/output" \
                 ghcr.io/games-on-whales/es-de:edge -c '
                     set -e
                     apt-get update -qq
-                    apt-get install -y -qq git build-essential libsdl2-dev pkgconf ca-certificates
-                    cat > /usr/local/bin/sdl-config << "SDLCFG"
-#!/bin/sh
-case "$1" in
-    --cflags)  exec pkg-config sdl2 --cflags ;;
-    --libs)    exec pkg-config sdl2 --libs ;;
-    --version) exec pkg-config sdl2 --modversion ;;
-    *)         exec pkg-config sdl2 --cflags --libs ;;
-esac
-SDLCFG
-                    chmod +x /usr/local/bin/sdl-config
+                    apt-get install -y -qq git build-essential libsdl1.2-compat-dev ca-certificates
                     git clone -q https://github.com/billzajac/ti99sim.git /tmp/ti99sim
                     cd /tmp/ti99sim
                     make