The Steam Deck Is Helping Me Experience Old School Gems

May 15, 2025

Hello peeps, today I am going to talk about how the Steam Deck is opening the doors to old school video games for me.

The Brave Little Portable Gaming PC

Before I share my experience, if you don't know what a Steam Deck is already, the Steam Deck is a portable gaming PC developed by Valve Corporation. It runs SteamOS, which is based off Arch Linux btw. Being a PC, it comes with a lot of freedoms that the PC platform offers. Some of these freedoms are: modding, settings tweaking, emulation, free online multiplayer, and more. But of all of the advantages I think one of the most important is the capability to run old school video games (in some cases more if not better than Windows OS!).

An image of the Steam Deck being displayed on a semi dark room.

Image made by Valve Corporation. From https://www.steamdeck.com/

Experiencing Old School Video Games

It all comes down to Valve's implementation of what they call Proton. Without getting too technical, Proton is compatibility software that allows SteamOS to run Windows software (in this case, video games!). This is cool because admittedly there are more games with native Windows ports than there are with Linux ports (again, SteamOS is based of Arch Linux). Thanks to Proton, we are able to play those games on the Steam Deck.

A perfect example of this is the game called Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners Of The Earth which is a 2005 video game developed by Betheda Softworks and originally released for Xbox (the original) and PC. This game has its age, and it shows when you try to run it on Windows 11 you will have a hard time running the game (according to some users on the steam forums). Players report frequent crashes and other gameplay issues on modern systems. With Proton tho, you have more chance for a successful play-through of the game; this is because Proton has access to old school Windows libraries (these old school titles usually do some Windows calls that are not available on Windows 10+).

In my experience: I just downloaded the game through Steam, I then "told" the game to use Proton 9, and I clicked play. I am now playing Call of Cthulhu at a smooth 90fps! I have read the game has issues when running it above 60 fps but as of this writing the game is playing flawlessly.

It isn't just Proton tho. Part of being able to play more games begs the question; if I can play games that did not have specific controller support how could I play them on the Steam Deck at all? Well...

Steam Input Is A Technical Marble

At the time, getting controller support on games on PC was pretty rare; and Call of Cthulhu is not an exception. As far as I know, the game does not have controller support on its Steam version. This is were Steam Input comes into play.

Without getting too technical (again) Steam Input allows you, the player, to set custom controls for the games you are playing. This is regardless of the type of controller or input! Want to make the A button on your controller be equal to a Space Bar press? Go ahead. Want to make your character sprint when pressing the Left Thumb Stick all the way up? Go crazy. Want to make your own radial menus for the game, those which can simulate button presses be it from a keyboard, mouse, or a controller itself? Right on brother.

Basically, Steam Input lets you simulate input from either keyboard & mouse or a normal gamepad. This is cool because after downloading a Steam Input configuration from the community I am able to play Call of Cthulhu as if it had official controller support. This alone opens the floodgates that, in theory, lets you play ANY game on the Steam Deck

Is Not Just The Steam Deck

And even better, these features are not specific to SteamOS or the Steam Deck, you can use this super power as long as you play the games on Steam! Even on a normal desktop PC. Steam Input is available on the Steam app itself; and Proton is available when using Steam on a non-Windows PC (in my case, Fedora linux and the Steam Deck itself).

The All In One Gaming "Console"

The Steam Deck is truly a gem, no buyers remorse at all with this one. I might make a dedicated blog post about it; but the Steam Deck really allows me to experience any game I throw at it. And thanks to Steam Input, it can be as comfortable as you want it to be, or as wacky as you want it to be.