Ah, like l-o-l, the main thing I see here is that you're both running N-Go boards. Wonder if the mouse driver is not talking with the N-Go port in the same way.
For starting the game, I read the actual port directly so obviously that works. The mouse driver just was a faster and more efficient way to work with the mouse.
Thanks for the feedback. I will go pester some Next nerds and see if anybody else has run into this... 😁