http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9637
--- Comment #12 from Louis Lenders xerox_xerox2000@yahoo.co.uk 2007-09-26 16:12:33 --- Hi, i used dlls from my winxp partition and then it works. As a (not recommended) workaround you could install ies4linux (http://www.tatanka.com.br/ies4linux/download.html) and the run the game by WINEPREFIX=~/.ies4linux/ie6 wine Switchball
(I'm not encouraging anyone to use ies4linux, but here it's needed to get around the initial start-up screen, so we can at least see if there are any d3d issues blocking this game)