Registry: winxp vs win95

i’m finally getting around to playing The Neverhood Chronicle, circa 1995. oddly, it stores save games as registry keys. the game runs fine in xp (using win95 emulation mode), save games appear to write fine (there is a new key, with the save game name and a bunch of stuff in it), but i get an error when i try to load the saved game.

anyone know whether there is some difference between win95 and winxp registry that would cause this to happen?

i love it when i can answer my own stupid questions. must have something to do with the win95 emulation mode. i turned that off and save games loaded fine. oh well.