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?
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.
Mar 01, 2013 In this tutorial i will show you how to Run Android Games and Google Apps on your pc,Mac Computer for free, with this BlueStack App Player program you can run any of android game and application. Mar 12, 2017 You still won’t necessarily be able to play games at high settings—after all, you still have whatever low-power graphics card came with your Mac—but at least you’ve got a much wider selection of games to choose from. Also, because they’re designed for the operating system, the same games tend to run better on Windows than on macOS.
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!
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Updated October 2019: Updated with the best options.
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Fishing timeC.J.'s next Fishing Tourney will be in July
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It is not always possible to go with the installation and un-installation processes for checking each and every app on your smart phone or tablet. Better, you find some way to play the Android Games on a Windows PC which have a sufficient memory and space.
Playing Android Games on a Windows PC is not so hard as Intel has decided to launch “Dual OS” PC with Windows 8 and Android platform. This lets you booting your computer directly into the Android system, hence installing the apps or games on your PC. But, you won’t have to buy a new PC only for the purpose of playing a Game. Plenty of Android app emulators are available to run Android Games and Apps in almost all Windows environment.
In this article, we’ve brought 6 various ways to play Android Games on Windows 7, Windows 8 and even on Windows XP. Not only the games but you can also run any Android app at the Windows system.
1. Install BlueStacks to Play Android Games on PC
BlueStacks is a Android emulator which does not actually replace your operating system. Rather, it acts just like another software which is easy to install. Once you install it, you can run BlueStacks into a separate window at your Windows desktop.
The BlueStacks environment is very similar to that of Android. It allows you to connect with Google Play store and install the apps and games at you emulator. If you grab the APK file from your friends device or download it from somewhere else, you can still install that game/app at your computer using BlueStacks. Thus, you can install and play any android game at your Windows computer. This way you can also run WhatsApp on a PC.
2. Install Android SDK to run Android Games on PC
Another alternative is the Android SDK, the official emulator for the Android app developers by Google. This tool is not a suitable choice for the daily use as it is slower and difficult to configure. This is actually useful for the developers to test the apps.
If you are willing to go with it, download the Google’s Android SDK and open the SDK manager program. Now, select Tools > Manage AVDs. Here, you can create the Android Virtual Device with your own configuration. Once created, click the ‘Start’ button to launch it.
3. Play Android games on Genymotion, an alternative to BlueStacks
Another Android emulator is Genymotion which is quite impressive with its speed and features. It can be considered as the best alternative of BlueStacks.
It allows drag-and-drop installation of apps and games. You can test any app or game in a big screen. It also supports the sensor system and open GL.
You can download Genymotion from here.
4. Run Android Apps and Games from your Browser
Unlike the above desktop based Android emulators, Manymo which is a browser based emulator does not require any installation or complex configuration to run the Android apps. Just browse this link and upload your app to test. The interesting thing about Manymo is that you can embed any Android app or game at any webpage by using this browser based emulator.
5. Use Android X-86
This is a the desktop version of the Android OS which can be run natively in AMD and Intel processors. You can install this version just like you install the Windows or Linux operating systems in your x-86 based computers.
As Android X-86 is a community project, it currently supports a few number of devices like Del Inspiron Mini Duo, Samsung Q1U, ASUS Eee PCs, Viliv S5, Lenovo ThinkPad x61 Tablet and Viewsonic Viewpad 10.
Another interesting thing about Android X-86 is that you can install it on a virtual machine using VMware or Virtual box.
6. Use Live Android to run Android Games on PC
Live Android is another complete OS for Android games and apps which can boot separately in a laptop or desktop computer. As it is an OS, you can also install it in VMware or Virtual Box to test the Android apps and games.
Conclusion:
A lot of Android emulators has been available from the past few years but to be frank, they did not have any purpose. The touch screens with Windows 8 and Tablets gave a reason of using them to test various Android games and apps out of almost 750000 in count.