Updated: March 12, 2025
Here's something I never quite expected to write. But recently, I've been playing and playing with some old games, most notably the wonderful Caesar III and Pharaoh, and I decided to expand my adventure. And I thought, well, Max Payne, a lovely title of yore. After all, I enjoyed this game immensely back in the early 2000s, and I must have finished it four or five times at least. So I wondered, can it run in Linux?
To see what gives, I went rummaging in my old game archive. As it happens, Max Payne is one of those majestic games that simplify things for the user - it's largely self-contained. So you simply grab the directory with all its contents, and copy that to a different host. Boom. Now, how does a 2001 game handle a 4K screen on an old yet powerful laptop with Kubuntu 24.04, plus Nvidia PRIME? Well, let's find out.
Testing, testing
My chosen box for the experiment is the 2014 Lenovo Y50, which I recently upgraded with an SSD and had the latest available Kubuntu LTS installed on it. The early experience was a bit tough, but things have settled nicely since, and the laptop works well. Despite its advanced age, this is a fully up-to-date, modern, top-notch system running everything you can think of, even stuff like Upscayl and DaVinci Resolve. There you go. Notably, the laptop comes with a 4K screen, that's 3840x2160 pixels for you. In any case, the spec is at least a decade newer than whatever Max Payne had in the day.
Well, I copied the game folder, placed it in my home directory, opened the command line and ran:
wine ./MaxPayne.exe
And it works! Superbly! Blimey, I couldn't believe it. The game started without a hitch. The launcher was there, albeit super-tiny, but it correctly identified everything, including all of my screen's available resolutions, all the way up to 4K! Really incredible. Not only did the folder move work seamlessly, the game was running in Linux, a quarter of a century after its release, without any patching or tweaking whatsoever.
Change adapter if you like, set 4K resolution, awesome.
I did some basic changes, like mouse cursor sensitivity, and dove into action. Yes!
Making things even cooler
Next, I configured WINE to look nicer on my HD display, as I showed you both in the dedicated tutorial and my long, mega tutorial on everything HD/UHD in Linux. Basically, I changed the WINE DPI from the default value of 96 to 216. This made everything bigger, including the game launcher. So Max Payne didn't have any problems with this, either.
I cranked up all the options to High, chose the 32-bit color option, and fired up the game again. Not only was it working as smoothly as before, it also looked a tad sharper. Sure, the 2001 graphics won't make you faint, but all things considered, this is absolutely fantastic.
The scaled-up launcher looks a bit washed out (216 DPI). But not the game.
Remember how I loaded my 2001 saves in Pharaoh, and 2003 saves in Caesar III? Well, I like to keep my old game saves, perhaps obsessively. And did I keep my Max Payne game progress? Of course, I did. Here are some 2008 images, from the last time I played this title:
It's quite easy to get the old saves into your Linux setup. Max Payne, when running under WINE, conveniently saves these under Documents/Max Payne Savegames, in your Linux home directory. No fussing, no problems whatsoever. Simply copy them there, e.g.:
/home/roger/Documents/Max Payne Savegames/
Conclusion
Well, there you go. Another lovely accomplishment on the Linux gaming front. In 2023, I wrote an article on my achievements so far, focused on Steam and Proton. But WINE on its own also works well in many cases, as my last three endeavors show. In particular, Max Payne is an excellent surprise. One folder, no great fussing, amazing hardware support. That's some solid forward thinking.
I'm quite happy. Perhaps this isn't a critical piece of the puzzle in my migration away from Windows, but it is a piece, and a valuable one. Every little bit counts. Another way of looking at it is, well, let's move 98% of everything I do to Linux. That will be a great accomplishment, also. But never mind that right now. We wanted to play Max Payne, and pay it we can. Linux, WINE, one folder that has it all, and 4K support. Sweet. See you around, fellow nerds.
Cheers.