The Mac has plenty of games, but it'll always get the short end of the stick compared to Windows. If you want to play the latest games on your Mac, you have no choice but to install Windows ... or do you?

Sep 03, 2014  Hi, I am new to virtual machine. I have Windows 7 and Ubuntu dual boot on my single harddisk right now. Windows 7 on sda1, ubuntu on sda2. Just wondering, could I use any virtual machine software, virtualbox or virtual PC or vmware, to run my ubuntu on sda2 under windows 7. Is it possible to play old video games with a windows XP running through VirtualBox? The old games i want to play are: Warcraft 2, Fate The Traitor Soul, emulators such as EPSXE, project 64, NES games. Other than that, i don't really play games on the computer, i mostly look at movies with VLC and listen at music, i also convert video and rip CDs. Is it possible to play old video games with a windows XP running through VirtualBox? The old games i want to play are: Warcraft 2, Fate The Traitor Soul, emulators such as EPSXE, project 64, NES games. Other than that, i don't really play games on the computer, i mostly look at movies with VLC and listen at music, i also convert video and rip CDs.

There are a few ways you can play Windows games on your Mac without having to dedicate a partition to Boot Camp or giving away vast amounts of hard drive space to a virtual machine app like VMWare Fusion or Parallels Desktop. Here are a few other options for playing Windows games on your Mac without the hassle or expense of having to install Windows.

GeForce Now

PC gaming on Mac? Yes you can, thanks to Nvidia's GeForce Now. The service allows users to play PC games from Steam or Battle.net on macOS devices. Better still, the graphic power of these games resides on Nvidia's servers. The biggest drawback: the service remains in beta, and there's been no announcement when the first full release is coming or what a monthly subscription will cost.

For now, at least, the service is free to try and enjoy. All supported GeForce NOW titles work on Macs, and yes, there are plenty of them already available!

The Wine Project

The Mac isn't the only computer whose users have wanted to run software designed for Windows. More than 20 years ago, a project was started to enable Windows software to work on POSIX-compliant operating systems like Linux. It's called The Wine Project, and the effort continues to this day. OS X is POSIX-compliant, too (it's Unix underneath all of Apple's gleam, after all), so Wine will run on the Mac also.

Wine is a recursive acronym that stands for Wine Is Not an Emulator. It's been around the Unix world for a very long time, and because OS X is a Unix-based operating system, it works on the Mac too.

As the name suggests, Wine isn't an emulator. The easiest way to think about it is as a compatibility layer that translates Windows Application Programming Interface (API) calls into something that the Mac can understand. So when a game says 'draw a square on the screen,' the Mac does what it's told.

You can use straight-up Wine if you're technically minded. It isn't for the faint of heart, although there are instructions online, and some kind souls have set up tutorials, which you can find using Google. Wine doesn't work with all games, so your best bet is for you to start searching for which games you'd like to play and whether anyone has instructions to get it working on the Mac using Wine.

Note: At the time of this writing, The Wine Project does not support macOS 10.15 Catalina.

CrossOver Mac

CodeWeavers took some of the sting out of Wine by making a Wine-derived app called CrossOver Mac. CrossOver Mac is Wine with specialized Mac support. Like Wine, it's a Windows compatibility layer for the Mac that enables some games to run.

CodeWeavers has modified the source code to Wine, made some improvements to configuration to make it easier, and provided support for their product, so you shouldn't be out in the cold if you have trouble getting things to run.

My experience with CrossOver — like Wine — is somewhat hit or miss. Its list of actual supported games is pretty small. Many other unsupported games do, in fact work — the CrossOver community has many notes about what to do or how to get them to work, which are referenced by the installation program. Still, if you're more comfortable with an app that's supported by a company, CrossOver may be worth a try. What's more, a free trial is available for download, so you won't be on the hook to pay anything to give it a shot.

Boxer

If you're an old-school gamer and have a hankering to play DOS-based PC games on your Mac, you may have good luck with Boxer. Boxer is a straight-up emulator designed especially for the Mac, which makes it possible to run DOS games without having to do any configuring, installing extra software, or messing around in the Mac Terminal app.

With Boxer, you can drag and drop CD-ROMs (or disk images) from the DOS games you'd like to play. It also wraps them into self-contained 'game boxes' to make them easy to play in the future and gives you a clean interface to find the games you have installed.

Boxer is built using DOSBox, a DOS emulation project that gets a lot of use over at GOG.com, a commercial game download service that houses hundreds of older PC games that work with the Mac. So if you've ever downloaded a GOG.com game that works using DOSBox, you'll have a basic idea of what to expect.

Some final thoughts

In the end, programs like the ones listed above aren't the most reliable way to play Windows games on your Mac, but they do give you an option.

Of course, another option is to run Windows on your Mac, via BootCamp or a virtual machine, which takes a little know-how and a lot of memory space on your Mac's hard drive.

How do you play your Windows games on Mac?

Let us know in the comment below!

Updated October 2019: Updated with the best options.

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Fishing time

C.J.'s next Fishing Tourney will be in July

There are four Fishing Tourneys each year in Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Here's when they are and what the rules are for participating.

There are many reasons you may want to use a virtual machine on your Mac. Perhaps you need to run a copy of Windows on your machine for work purposes. Maybe the goal is to run another instance or version of macOS on your computer for compatibility reasons. Maybe you want a copy of Linux on your computer.

Play Windows Games On Mac Virtualbox 10

Whatever the circumstances, there are various ways to run a virtual machine on your Mac. Here's a closer look at the best options available.

Mac Os On Windows Virtualbox

What is a virtual machine?

Software virtualization allows you to simulate a hardware environment and run multiple operating systems on one computer. These software-created virtual machines take advantage of the hardware components on a computer such as RAM and storage in complete isolation to the primary operating system. Among the most popular virtualization options for Mac users are Parallels Desktop, VMWare Fusion, and VirtualBox.

Parallels Desktop 15

My favorite way to virtualize, Parallels, gets better each year. With the latest version, Parallels Desktop 15, you can take advantage of Apple's Metal 2, which allows machines to maximize the graphics and computing potential for apps. With Parallels now supporting Metal, highly intensive Windows apps such as CAD software and games that require DirectX 11 now work on Mac. There's also improved performance for DirectX 9 and DirectX 10.

To date, nearly 1,600 PC games require DirectX 11, which means you can now experience all of them on your Mac through Parallels virtualization. Noted Windows apps you can run on your Mac include Autodesk 3ds Max 2020, Lumion, ArcGIS Pro, and more.

Beyond this, Parallels Desktop 15 is also fully compatible and optimized for macOS Catalina, which means it supports Apple's Sidecar. It also works with macOS Mojave 10.14, macOS High Sierra 10.13, and macOS Sierra 10.12. And yes, it also supports Apple Pencil.

Parallels Desktop 15 is the company's flagship consumer product and is available through a free trial, regardless of the version you choose. The home version is $80 or $50 for an upgrade, while the professional version is $100 per year. The former doesn't include free updates to future versions of Parallels Desktop, but also has no expiration date. The professional version does include free upgrades. Once a new version gets released, you can download it from the Parallels website. New versions of Parallels typically arrive around the time Apple releases a new version of macOS, usually in the fall.

Who's this for: Parallel offers a no-nonsense approach to virtualizaiton. Grab a copy if you're looking for a solution that just works.

VMWare Fusion 11.5

Parallel's closest virtualization competitor, Fusion, is another great choice for consumers. Created by Dell Computer's VMWare, the latest version of Fusion (11.5), has been designed to take advantage of macOS Catalina tools, including Sidecar and Dark Mode.

Like Parallels, Fusion lets you create a virtual machine through software that can run separately from your macOS installation. In this case, you can use Fusion with Windows 10 (or another operating system) through a window on your Mac desktop or in full-screen mode. With Fusion's unity mode, you can run Windows-based applications on your computer as if they were Mac apps. Beginning with Fusion 11, support was added for Apple's Metal graphics system. It also supports Touch Bar on a MacPro Pro.

Fusion 11.5 is available at the same price points as Parallels, $80 for a full version and $50 for an update. A professional version is also available for IT environments. All versions come with a 14-day free trial.

The VMWare Fusion interface doesn't look nearly as nice as the one offered by Parallels, but it's close. If you're familiar with other VMWare products, including Workstation Pro for Windows, Fusion is probably the path for you, although check out both products if you can.

Fusion 11.5 is available for download from the VMWare website.

Who's this for: VMWare's Fusion 11.5 is nearly as good as Parallels 15. If you're familiar with VMWare products, Fusion is probably the one for you.

VirtualBox 6.1

When using software, I expect a polished experienced. Unfortunately, Oracle's VirtualBox is the least polished virtualization title on this list. Despite this, there are some important differences between it and Parallels 15 and VMware Fusion 11.5 that might make it a better solution, depending on your situation.

Perhaps the most important reason to consider VirtualBox is that it's free, at least for personal or educational use. Another advantage: Oracle has released VirtualBox as open-source, which offers more flexibility to end-users than the other solutions. Unfortunately, because it's open-source, VirtualBox doesn't provide technical support, although there's an active user forum.

But again, it's important to circle back around to VirtualBox's interface, which isn't nearly as slick or easy to use as the others. If you're an IT professional or someone with the time to play around with open-source software, by all means, consider VirtualBox. Otherwise, pay for a copy of Parallels 15 or VMware Fusion 11.5.

VirtualBox is available to download online. It's available for Mac, Windows, Linux, and Solaris too.

Who's this for: Open-source software is preferred by many computer users and for those folks, VirtualBox is a great choice. Plus, it's free.

What about Apple's Bootcamp?

If you rather not use a third-party solution, consider Apple's Boot Camp. Built into macOS, the software isn't run on virtualization technology. Instead, it lets you boot your Mac into another operating system at startup, either a separate version of macOS or copy of Windows 8, Windows 8.1, or Windows 10.

The biggest disadvantage of using Boot Camp over virtualization is that you can't access your primary operating system at the same time. This means, for example, you can't check your Apple Mail at the same time as you're using Windows.

On the flip side, with Boot Camp, there's no hardware sharing. Therefore, only the active operating system is using your system's graphics card and processor. If you own an older Mac, you might experience a significant performance jump versus virtualization because of this.

Who's this for: If you want to run Windows nearly exclusively on your Mac, Boot Camp is almost certainly the choice for you. If you plan on going back and forth often between Mac and Windows, pick another solution.

About Windows licenses

Unlike macOS, Windows isn't free. Therefore, regardless of the virtualization solution you choose, understand that you still need to purchase a Windows license to use the operating system on your Mac long-term. A Windows 10 Home license will set you back $139, while Windows 10 Pro is $199.

Questions?

Let us know below if you have any questions about virtualization or Boot Camp.

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Fishing time

C.J.'s next Fishing Tourney will be in July

There are four Fishing Tourneys each year in Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Here's when they are and what the rules are for participating.