Classics On Deck #3: Zoo Tycoon (2001) / Driver: San Francisco

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We're back for another round of Classics on Deck, our weekly article looking at older games and getting them running on the Steam Deck. Last week, we took a look at the classic ARPG Diablo alongside Tony Hawk's Underground 2. This week, we're taking a look at another 2 games that aren't really available digitally anymore, Zoo Tycoon, the 2001 zoo management game, and 2011's Driver: San Francisco, which unfortunately got delisted from storefronts a while ago due to licensing issues.

Zoo Tycoon (2001)

• Digital Availability: None, Requires physical disc & USB CD-Drive, or equivalent ISO
• Version Tested: Disc (Physical Disc)
• Wine/Proton Version Used: Wine-GE 8-26

Installation Guide

There are several Lutris installers you can find for Zoo Tycoon when you add a game in Lutris and use the "Search the Lutris website for installers" option, but we're going to use the one titled "Complete Collection (CD)". Don't worry if your copy of Zoo Tycoon isn't the Complete Collection, my standard copy from 2001 also worked fine. If you do have 2 CDs with your version of the game, try using one of the "2 CDs" installers.

After you've selected your installer, select your disc or ISO when Lutris prompts you for it. Then proceed through the installation as you would on Windows.

At the end of the installation, you can close the Setup program, but Lutris will likely return an error at this point, saying the installation failed, even if it succeeds. So you can now click on "Abort" on the Lutris installation window to close it.

At this point, click on the "+" button in Lutris to add a game, then "Add locally installed game", name the game "Zoo Tycoon," select "Wine" as the Runner, then in the "Game Options" tab, navigate to your "zoo.exe" file in the Executable field, my zoo.exe file was located in /home/deck/Games/zoo-tycoon/drive_c/Program Files/Microsoft Games/Zoo Tycoon/zoo.exe and finally change the "Prefix architecture" to 32-bit. You can now save the configuration, and Zoo Tycoon should appear in your Lutris library. Go ahead and right-click it and "Create Steam shortcut" you can now go back into Gaming Mode and boot the game as normal.

As I have a physical disc and a USB disc drive, the game can read from the USB disc drive and boot the game, but if you're using an ISO, you might need to find a way to mount the ISO from within the game mode or find another way to play. It's also worth bearing in mind that the CD is only needed to boot the game and once you're in the game, you can unplug the USB disc drive from the Steam Deck and play handheld.

Steam Deck Performance & Issues

To control the game, you'll need to use the Keyboard (WASD) & Mouse default controller layout template. This pretty much gets the basics in place for you, as the game primarily uses just the mouse and arrow keys to play.

The game is hard-capped to 60 FPS, so you can go ahead and apply a 60 FPS Frame Limit in SteamOS, alongside a 4W TDP Limit, which should preserve battery life and keep you at a solid 60 FPS throughout play.

The game only supports 4:3 resolutions in the menus, so you will have black bars on either side. You can edit the "zoo.ini" file in the Zoo Tycoon directory (the same directory as zoo.exe is in as shown above) and put 1280 as the "screenwidth" and 800 as the "screenheight" under the [user] section of the INI file to remove any black bars and play with a proper aspect ratio for the Steam Deck.

Do not switch between Windowed and Fullscreen modes in-game as it offers no benefit and crashed my game when I attempted it.

Battery life is pretty good, with power draw being around 8-9W, so expect about 6 hours of battery on a Steam Deck OLED and around 4 hours from a Steam Deck LCD.

Gameplay

Zoo Tycoon is a classic, and while its gameplay mechanics have been outshined by the likes of games such as Planet Zoo, it still holds up as a fun zoo management tycoon. If you've got nostalgia for this game, just hearing the menu music can send you back, and you'll be dying to get that Thomson Gazelle exhibit up and running!

We do have Zoo Tycoon 2 as a game to cover at a later date, so I look forward to diving back in with that one as the series makes the transition to 3D.

Driver: San Francisco (2011)

• Digital Availability: None (Delisted from Steam and Ubi Sore, keys are massively overpriced unless you own the game prior to its removal from sale)
• Version Tested: Latest Version of the digital game (No CD)
• Wine/Proton Version Used: Proton Experimental

Installation

Damn, now this is a blast from the past. Driver San Francisco was one of the biggest surprises of the early 2010s with its hilarious mind-jumping gameplay, enjoyable characters, and visuals that still hold up today. Unfortunately, the game was delisted years ago on all platforms, and the only copies available sell for insane prices, digital or physical.

For those lucky enough to own the game on Steam, it is a simple matter of installing the game that way. Whatever way of installation, I recommend using the Proton Experimental compatibility layer, as it would boot into a black screen for me otherwise.

If you have a physical disc of the game, you can use a USB DVD drive and use Lutris to install the game that way. Insert the Driver San Francisco disc into your USB DVD Drive and select “Install a Windows game from an executable” when adding a game to Lutris. I named my folder "Driver San Francisco,” but you can name it whatever you want. Proceed along the Lutris steps. Select the “Setup.exe” file on the root of the disc as the setup file for the game when Lutris prompts you for one Proceed with the installation as usual, just bear in mind that it might take quite a while to install.

Once you’ve saved the new configuration, you can boot the game as normal from Steam if you made a Steam Shortcut or from Lutris otherwise. If all else fails, or if you run into a problem with Lutris, you can install it on another platform and transfer the installed folder to the Steam Deck through a flash drive, then make a shortcut through Steam as usual.

Steam Deck Performance & Issues

Driver San Francisco runs fantastic on the Steam Deck with full controller support out of the box. The game looks great as we hop between cars, speeding through the sprawling metropolis of San Francisco and the game still makes me chuckle with its cheesy dialogue.

The game plays at a smooth 90FPS on stock settings on the Steam Deck OLED, although it will push the battery hard without any tweaking. If you want to push the battery life to the max like me, I found a TDP of 5 watts, low graphics settings, and a 30FPS/60Hz frame lock that provided solid performance and a power drain of around 8 watts. With over 6 hours of battery life, playing one of the coolest racing games ever made is fantastic.

Whatever you choose, this is a great experience all around.

Gameplay

Driver San Francisco blends awesome arcade driving with cinematic stunts, a funky story with frantic car chases and mind powers, and surprisingly good dialogue. It isn’t a perfect experience of course, and GTA fans might be disappointed they cannot run over pedestrians while creating chaos throughout San Francisco. Civilians just teleport away from your rampaging car.

Despite this horrific disappointment, Driver San Francisco is fantastic on the Steam Deck, and I’m delighted to return to it after so many years.

That's it for this week's Classics on Deck. We'll be back with some more classic games to play on your Steam Deck next week.

Let us know in the comments below if you want us to check out any specific games, too, and we will add them to the list of games we plan on finding and testing.

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