About
Need for Speed: Most Wanted (2005) is an open-world arcade racer set in the fictional city of Rockport, developed by EA Black Box. It blends the Underground series' street racing and car customization with a Blacklist career mode in which the player works up a roster of 15 rival drivers, and it reintroduced high-stakes police pursuits to the series.
Widely regarded as a high point of the franchise, it was a major critical and commercial success, selling over 18 million copies. The 2005 original was never sold on Steam and is no longer offered for new digital purchase, so it remains a fan-favorite that players run from their own copies.
Identity
Launch
- Binary
- speed.exe
- Needs files
- none beyond the binary
Proton
- Version
- GE-Proton
- Winetricks
- —
- ProtonDB
- ProtonDB Silver runs with minor issues
⚙ Setup notes
Game: 2005 EA Black Box racer (the original Most Wanted; delisted — bring your own copy). Note the Steam appid 1262560 is the unrelated 2012 Criterion reboot, so this recipe carries no appid.
Disc check: The retail release uses SafeDisc copy protection, whose disc check no longer functions on modern Windows (and therefore under Proton). Apply EA's official v1.3 patch and run the resulting patched speed.exe; that is the standard legitimate fix for an owned copy.
Install: Add speed.exe as a non-Steam game and force GE-Proton (Proton Experimental also reported working).
Mod loader / controller: ThirteenAG's Widescreen Fix loads through a proxy dinput8.dll placed next to speed.exe. Tell Proton to load it by setting the launch option WINEDLLOVERRIDES="dinput8=n,b" %command% (native, then builtin); otherwise the fix — and its improved XInput gamepad support — will not load.
Binary choice: speed.exe is the main launcher; the v1.3 patch updates it in place.
Community fixes: ThirteenAG's Widescreen Fix (adds XInput gamepad support, FOV/HUD fixes), NFSMW Unlimiter, Extra Options, HD Reflections, Zolika's Limit Adjuster.
Reported to run about as well as on Windows once set up.
The one thing to know
No official ProtonDB rating: The 2005 original was never on Steam, so there is no ProtonDB entry for it (appid 1262560 rates the unrelated 2012 reboot). Community reports say it runs well, but it needs manual setup, so this is tracked as Silver rather than borrowing the reboot's tier.
Supply your own copy: The 2005 original (not the 2012 Criterion reboot); never sold on Steam, so no appid. Configuration only, no links.
DRM: Retail copies use SafeDisc, whose disc check fails on modern systems. The official v1.3 patch's executable is the standard fix for an owned copy.
Controller: Vanilla DirectInput pad detection is unreliable; the recommended path is the ThirteenAG Widescreen Fix's XInput gamepad support plus a Steam Input layout. Enable Gamepad in the in-game Controller settings as well.
Display: If the window drops to windowed mode on focus loss, re-set the resolution in Options to restore fullscreen.
Cosmetic: ThirteenAG Widescreen Fix is recommended for the Deck's 16:10 output; Unlimiter + Limit Adjuster fix vanilla framerate/physics quirks.
Community guides
Write-ups and threads from people who got this (or a similar) game running. deckport links to them — it doesn't reproduce them.
Get the artwork
deckport never hosts game images. Open this game on SteamGridDB, pick
the cover / hero / logo / icon you like, and drop them into the
game folder under .deckport-art/ before you push it to the
Deck. The importer files them under the right names automatically.
Run it on your Deck
Two files: the one-time importer (deckport.py) in your
Deck's home folder, and this game's install helper. Copy the game
into ~/Games and run the helper with Steam closed — it
writes the recipe (binary, launch options, Proton version)
and registers the shortcut with artwork.