Just to get it running? Not really, I think setting WINE version to WINE-GE-8-26 was the only requirement.

Personally I also:

• Installed widescreen patch.
• Adjusted Steam Input settings to:
  • Gamepad with joystick.
  • Changed D-pad to keyboard arrows and Start to Escape.
• Changed steering to controller in game.

With this setup everything works perfectly fine for me.

I did browse the themed sale a bit actually and tried the previously mentioned RR3 (demo). Unfortunately for me it doesn’t play well with multiple monitors and that’s a no-go for when I play on desktop. I want to try Richard Burns Rally some day, especially after seeing the huge RSF mod adding tons of tracks and cars to the game. Need to clean up my hard drive for that though as I’m a bit swamped in games at the moment.

I’ll probably won’t be jumping into anything else new for now as I have DIRT Rally sitting in the backlog pile, waiting for its turn in the spotlight. Thanks for the recommendations though, I’ll keep them in mind!

I haven’t played most of the games on your list (either at all or in a while), doubly so on the Deck, so my perspective is a bit limited. Sorry.

CMR04 is on the simcade side of things. Definitely more realistic than Old School Rally, should be relatively close to Rush Rally 3 or Richard Burns Rally (maybe slightly less realistic than those). I think Codemasters found a nice middle ground in terms of driving model with this game. It’s definitely one of the best rally games from that era at least.

In terms of battery life, I’m able to squeeze between 5 and 6 hours on full charge with this one.

Colin McRae Rally 04 - I finally set it up on my deck 2 or so weeks ago and that has been my main game on the device since then. It required a little bit of control tweaking but other than that it runs and plays great.
Awesome battery life too though that’s to be expected with such an old game.