Version E wasn't working on my pi, so I switched to version C. Now it works, but I can't run any of the games because they are too new. Any way to bypass this for the minor version difference? Or should I wait until version E is patched to work on raspi / new version is released?

yes there is an -accept_future parameter to avoid the version warning: https://www.lexaloffle.com/dl/docs/pico-8_manual.html#Commandline_parameters

if you try it and the cart doesn’t use any newer feature, then you can edit the version inside the cart (P8 are just text files!) so let it load without the parameter by version 0.2.5c

zep released 0.2.5f today so if you can update and it runs the whole problem goes away!