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I did it! I got the entire Nancy Drew series to work on Linux! Using Lutris, they all seem to work. At least, they boot up. I don't know if they'll actually be playable the whole way through, but usually, from my experience, if they boot, they run (except Trail of the Twister 😐 We'll see about her when we get there...).

After getting them all up and running on my 2011 MacBook Pro, I decided it was (probably) fine to wipe and install Zorin OS 17 on my 2017 MacBook Pro, and I'm glad I did. Not only do the games work just as good as they did on the previous machine, but the three problem games I was struggling with (Games 13-15), actually work! The choppy and laggy cursor is still there, and they all three still require dgvoodoo2 be enabled. However, the lagginess is SO much less noticeable on this machine. I'm assuming it's one of these things:

2011 MBP's have Gen 2 Intel Core i-series processors, meaning they do not have support for Vulckan. 2017 MBP's have Gen 7 Intel Core i-series processors. Therefore, they do.

2011 MBP's are thirteen years old, and, obviously, my 2017 machine is faster.

2011 MBP's have dual graphics, and on Mac's, specifically, graphics switching does not work. I do not know if my 2011 MBP is using it's Intel Integrated graphics or its AMD Radeon discrete graphics, or both, but there's a high likelyhood there's something buggy going on with those graphics in addition to the fact that they're both very old.

Either way, I'm absolutely thrilled to have all the Nancy Drew games working on Linux. The only downside is that Wine doesn't properly scale games on Wayland, so I have to use X11, for the time being. I'm so excited because Zorin OS looks absolutely gorgeous on Apple's Retina displays. There are a few Linux bugs that make this machine a little annoying to use, but, to be honest, the high resolution, better speakers, high display contrast, better performance, and better efficiency is so worth it.

So far in my journey to get all Nancy Drew games running on Lutris, so I can ditch Windows, my luck has finally run out.

Games 1-12 work flawlessly. We started off the UI 2 era with no issues, so I was optimistic, but I was a fool.

Starting with Game 13 (Last Train to Blue Moon Canyon), and finishing off the UI 2-series through Game 15 (Creature of Kapu Cave), the games cannot run on their own. They require dgvoodoo2 be enabled. Unfortunately, enabling that settings make the cursor lag and flicker continuously. My only hope to stop this would be to disable dgvoodoo2, but disabling it makes the games crash immediately upon launch. For some reason, Games 16 and 17 (the only UI 3 games I’ve installed and tested) work just fine without dgvoodoo2 turned on. As a result, it’s only Games 13, 14, & 15 that require dgvoodoo2, so that’s kinda annoying.

Like I said, UI 3 works pretty well. The only caveat is that Game 16 (The White Wolf of Icicle Creek) has no graphics settings. For some reason the resolution that the UI 3 games run at really disagree with my 1440x900 display. They scale really poorly, and look extremely blurry. Text is still legible (barely), but it is still rather annoying that the pixelated text can’t look crisp.

Luckily, starting in Game 17 (Legend of the Crystal Skull) HeR Interactive started including two Full Screen modes. One is supposed to work better for CRT monitors, and the other for LCD monitors. The latter makes the text look far better, although it still isn’t perfect. I think the rest of the UI 3 games have this setting, so that’s good. It’s just a shame that Game 16 can’t be fixed and the rest can’t be perfect.

If I’m remembering correctly, I originally played the final UI 3 game (Alibi in Ashes) on this machine, using Lutris, so I’m hopeful all UI 3 games will work. I don’t know if I’ve ever tried running a UI 4 game on here, but I’ll cross my fingers and hope.

I’m not even gonna try installing UI 5 (Midnight in Salem) with its live-rendered graphics. Even my M1 iMac couldn’t handle that game. It was so inefficient and poorly coded.

Here’s to hoping the rest of UI 3 & 4 goes smoothly though. If you made it this far and know any tricks to get Games 13-15 working without dgvoodoo2, I’m all ears.

As I replay the Nancy Drew series, I've decided to start a second spreadsheet where I detail the various crimes committed by and against Nancy Drew. Here's what I have so far.