My Win9x machine has a Voodoo 3 in it. I updated to the 1.7 drivers, but then UT wouldn't launch, so I backed down and reinstalled 1.5. It's running DX 7.0.
My point? I don't think the Voodoo drivers are up to date enough when it comes to DirectX 8. _Installing_ the game may have little or nothing do with this, but us Voodoo card owners are going to have more and more problems with the newer releases. I don't even bother installing games needing DX8 on my Win9x w/V3 system, and I wont until I put a GeForce2 card (thankfully, they make PCI cards for that chip now) since Nvidia is of course, still updating their drivers.
So, keep this in mind if you have problems playing the latest releases. As for _intalling_ them, I have little advice. But, hey, you said you'd appreciate all suggestions. Hopefully this advice may help you out later, if not now.