Dino Crisis 1 and 2 Get Released On GOG, But It Needs A Workaround To Run on Steam Deck

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Update 1/29/25 - Using Proton GE 8-30 in Lutris does fix the cutscenes, but it seems to only work in Desktop mode. Thank you to Julian in the comments for telling us about using this layer!

I have been loving GOG more and more lately. While it isn't perfect, nor does it have the same extensive features Steam has, the way it preserves classic video games and does it without needing to go through any DRM is fantastic. As much as I love Steam, I do appreciate being able to actually own the games we buy from here and not need to go through any DRM to play them. Out of nowhere, GOG brought two new games to their library, and I am overjoyed to see it.

I remember many people hoping to see the original Dino Crisis games be made available somehow, including myself, and GOG has answered. Both Dino Crisis 1 and 2 are available on GOG now, where you can buy them separately for $9.99 each or as a bundle of both for $16.99. It's great being able to buy and own these games, and of course, I had to immediately try them on the Steam Deck. Unfortunately, I did run into some issues.

I tend to gravitate towards the Heroic Games Launcher for GOG and Epic games, but unfortunately, it didn't work for me. Every time I tried to play Dino Crisis 1, I would get a DirectDraw error. As for Dino Crisis 2, it just wouldn't launch at all. After doing some research, and some testing, I discovered exactly what the issue was, and got both games running on the Deck!

To play the games easily, I ended up using Lutris, another open-source platform that gives direct access to some of your game libraries, including GOG. Lutris can be easily found and installed via the Discover Store. Just running Dino Crisis 2 through Lutris with no changes fixed it completely and was able to launch. However, for Dino Crisis 1, I had to go into the properties and enable vgVoodoo 2. The reason Dino Crisis 1 wasn't working seems to be some issue with the compatibility of the older graphics API used for the game. vgVoodoo is a wrapper that converts older APIs into newer formats, making them compatible.

While both games are playable, I am facing one issue. Some pre-rendered cutscenes show a rainbow screen instead of the cutscene, and I haven't been able to fix it yet. I plan to write a full guide once I fix this and find a way to use vgVoodoo with Heroic so Lutris isn't required. But if you want to play the classic Dino Crisis games from GOG right now, this would be how to do it.

I also noticed that the game drains much more battery than it should. You can set a TDP limit of 4 or 5 to keep the drain low because a game from 1999/2000 should not be draining 14W of battery. The games both limit to 30-31 FPS, but it makes sense due to the age.

However, even with some of these issues, I am elated that we can play Dino Crisis on the Steam Deck at all. It's never a guarantee these older games will work, especially on the Deck, but I am glad I was able to find a way to get it running.

Dino Crisis is available on GOG now for $16.99 for both games.

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