How to open an .exe file

An exe file is a windows executable file and you can not run it in Mac OS X. You have to been running either a windows machine or an emulated windows machine. I'm not familiar with crossover but if you get a program like Parallels that sets up a virtual windows machine (you have to have a full installable copy of windows xp or xp pro or vista) you will be able to run it.

Glor

An ".EXE" file is a Windows executable -- it's not a Flash game. If you open ther Terminal application you can do this for confirmation:

$ cd /path/to/directory/with/the/exe
$ file FILENAME.EXE

... which will identify what sort of file it is. You don't open the file so much as run (execute it). To do so, however, you need a Windows environment for it to execute. Windows applications, like OS X ones, rely on using various libraries (DLLs under Windows) and resources (like the Windows Registry, pipes, etc.) in order to load and run.

You have three different choices: install and run Windows natively on your Mac using Boot Camp (which requires you to partition your hard disk and select which OS to boot; requires a licensed copy of Windows), run the application in a virtual machine into which Windows has been installed (a VM is an application that provides a realtime simulation of a complete computer system where you can run other operating systems as applications; requires a licensed copy of Windows), or you can use a software implementation of the Windows runtime environment (Wine and CrossOver Mac are two such apps, no copy of Windows required but you must install the application and not all Windows software will work 100%).

If this is for work, I would heartily suggest a VM solution like VMWare Fusion or Parallels. It will allow you a sandbox to run Windows in without having to worry about mucking up your system, and ensuring that you can always keep a reference "good" windows install to go back to if a piece of bad software messes it up.

If you have a G5 Mac (as shown in your sig), none of the suggestion so far to run Parallels, Crossover, or Bootcamp are appropriate. They don't work on G5 Macs.

Of course, I have no idea what you mean by "Intel G5" -- they are two different kinds of processors.

Could you be a bit more specific about this game? Does it have a name? You say it is a flash-style game. Perhaps the .exe file is just self-unzipping archive -- and the flash program is inside? If the .exe is an archive, there are Mac programs that can unarchive zip archives in .exe format. Now whether the flash program will run on the mac is another question.

What model Mac are you trying to run it on?

I think we first need to get straight what you mean by "Intel G5". There is no such thing. The G5 is a PPC processor made by IBM/Motorola. An Intel processor is made by Intel.

Do you mean a G5 iMac? or perhaps an Intel iMac?

If you go to Apple Menu > About this Mac, what does it say?

(OK, I see you've updated and clarified: Intel iMac.)

Are these Flash programs made with Director?

Do you by any chance have Director on your Mac? I'm wondering if it could open the file?

You probably don't have Director, since Adobe programs are so horribly expensive.

(BTW, Crossover is only able to run a limited subset of windows programs. Have you tested your Crossover installation with a known program it can run, to be sure you have it installed properly. You may have to go to the Crossover forums to sort this out.)

BTW2 here is a Mac program that can supposedly extract Flash animations from .exe files. Don't know if that will help you:

http://echoone.com/filejuicer/

As others have said, there is no such thing an Intel G5.
Use this article to identify your iMac:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=301724

If you have an Intel iMac, then you can run:

Apple's Bootcamp
Parallel's Workstation
CrossOver Mac
DOSBox
VMWare
Wintel by Open OS X
Open Darwin's DarWINE
iEmulator
Q (QEMU) by Kberg

If you have a G5 iMac, you can only run:
Wintel by Open OS X
Open Darwin's DarWINE for PowerPC
iEmulator
Q (QEMU) by Kberg
Lismore System's GuestPC
Microsoft VirtualPC

Only WINE and Crossover solutions require no Windows installation.

As for running games, Intel Macs have much better graphics acceleration in certain virtualization engines listed above, whereas PowerPC Macs (including G5s) have none. Thus if you have don't have an Intel iMac, I'd get one, or another Intel Mac to test your game, if it requires any graphics acceleration.

WINE/Crossover has very limited application support, thus if you've tried your game on it, and it doesn't work, contact CrossOver and report the bug, if you have an Intel iMac, that they need to fix CrossOver to make it work. Unfortunately you may have to run Windows on your Mac to run the game. I would mention to the game developers, they should seriously consider crossplatform programming software such as Revolution, or RealBasic, or Flash, or Sun Java. Microsoft Java, ActiveX, DirectX, Visual Basic are not crossplatform, and are more subject to viruses and spyware.

Start by giving FileJuicer a try. It has a free trial period to let you see if it will help:

http://echoone.com/filejuicer/

the game is a flash file, rendered as an executable. (this is an option in flash)
You can ask your colleague to render it as an .swf file (should take very little time), you probably can open those.