> I installed Wine in Ubuntu running in WSL on a Windows 11 machine, and the game runs in that environment! Never thought I would run an old game in such a convoluted way.

You don't need WSL.

https://fdossena.com/?p=wined3d/index.frag

Compiled wined3d dlls that work on windows.

https://github.com/doitsujin/dxvk

Works on windows.

Just drop them in the game folder and the game should load them instead of the real directx.

There's also other implementations of old APIs to keep old video games running, some of them are even used by linux users who use wine, like dgVoodoo :

http://dege.freeweb.hu/dgVoodoo2/ (supports Glide, a proprietary API from the 3dfx era cards, along with dx 1-7, 8.1 and 9)

https://github.com/FunkyFr3sh/cnc-ddraw (fixes all issues you can have with DirectDraw, an old 2d API, can have its use for both windows users and people who use wine on linux)

https://github.com/otya128/winevdm run 16 bit apps on 64 windows

This, along with Windows's own compatibility mode tweaks, should run almost any game that has ever been released on Windows, without having the heavy overheard of a VM (as far as I know, WSL doesn't even know how to free memory it has claimed).