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HOW CAN I PLAY MY MICROSOFT GAMES ON MY MAC?

HOW CAN I USE ALL OF MY CD ROM GAMES THAT I USED TO USE ON MY OLD COMPUTER? THEY ARE FORMATTED FOR WINDOWS?

iMac (21.5-inch Late 2009), Mac OS X (10.6.8)

Posted on Mar 10, 2012 2:49 PM

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10 replies

Jun 15, 2012 2:39 PM in response to brendafrompeoria

So I am hearing.....Bootcamp. Virtual Camp. And Crossover Games. I too am looking to play Windows CD-Rom games on my Mac. I recently was able to install Boer for Mac to play DOS games. Works like a charm!

With this being said, more specifically, I'm looking to play Sammy Sosa's HH Baseball 2001 on my Mac. Simply put community dwellers..What do I need to make this happen? Is there software I can purchase through the Apple store? Or do I have to get this Crossover Games thing? If I get Bootcamp, will I also have to buy Windows OS also?


Help please. 🙂

Jun 15, 2012 2:40 PM in response to Niel

So I am hearing.....Bootcamp. Virtual Camp. And Crossover Games. I too am looking to play Windows CD-Rom games on my Mac. I recently was able to install Boer for Mac to play DOS games. Works like a charm!

With this being said, more specifically, I'm looking to play Sammy Sosa's HH Baseball 2001 on my Mac. Simply put community dwellers..What do I need to make this happen? Is there software I can purchase through the Apple store? Or do I have to get this Crossover Games thing? If I get Bootcamp, will I also have to buy Windows OS also?


Help please. 🙂

Jun 15, 2012 7:28 PM in response to spursfan09

Bootcamp will require a copy of Windows, as will virtual machines like Parallels and VMware Fusion.


Crossover Games is a version of WINE for Linux that is highly customized for running games for Windows on Mac OS X. Neither Crossover nor WINE require a copy of Windows—indeed that is their entire reason to be, running Windows software without running Windows. You can get WINE for Mac OS, but Crossover includes lots of Mac-specific upgrades and lots of game-specific hacks to ensure functionality.


However, as unreliable as virtual machines can be for games, Crossover and WINE are even more unreliable. I believe Crossover has a demo so you can make sure your particular program will run well before you decide to buy, but I'm not sure. I know that they have lists of games and their relative compatability on their website. If you don't see your game, then you're taking a risk. It may not even load, let alone run in any playable way. I have never gotten a game to run on Crossover if it wasn't listed on their site, and I have never gotten a listed game to run well. That's just me though. I have used Parallels with Windows 7, and I can get games to run, but it's frustratingly slow most of the time.


Boot camp, however, runs Windows natively on your hardware. There is no software-level virtualization (Parallels/VMware) or incomplete system software (Crossover/WINE). Games will run as well as they would on a PC that shipped with Windows and has similar specs.


So my recommendation is that you try Crossover first. Otherwise, buy a copy of Windows and install it with Bootcamp. Virtualization is best for convenient use of Windows office/business applications, not games.

HOW CAN I PLAY MY MICROSOFT GAMES ON MY MAC?

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