How to Play Windows PC Games on a Mac. Chris Hoffman @chrisbhoffman Updated July 5, 2017, 12:24pm EDT “PC gaming” has traditionally meant Windows gaming, but it doesn’t have to. More new games support Mac OS X than ever, and you can play any Windows game on your Mac.

• • • Mac gaming refers to use of video games on personal computers. In the 1990s, computers did not attract the same level of video game development as computers due to the high popularity of Windows and, for 3D gaming, Microsoft's technology.

In recent years, the introduction of and support for processors has eased of many games, including 3D games through use of and more recently Apple's own API. Virtualization technology and also permit the use of Windows and its games on Macintosh computers. Today, a growing number of popular games run natively on MacOS, though as of early 2018, a majority still require the use of Windows. Contents • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • Early game development on the Mac [ ] Prior to the release of the computer, a number of marketing executives at Apple were concerned that including a game in the finished would aggravate the impression that the made the Mac toy-like.

More critically, the limited amount of in the original Macintosh meant that fitting a game into the operating system would be very difficult. Eventually, created a called Puzzle that occupied only 600 of memory. This was deemed small enough to be safely included in the operating system, and it shipped with the Mac when released in 1984. With Puzzle—the first computer game specifically for a mouse—the Macintosh became the first computer with a game in its, and it would remain a part of the Mac OS for the next ten years, until being replaced in 1994 with Jigsaw, a game included as part of.

During the development of the Mac, a chess game similar to based on was shown to the development team. Reformatting my passport essential se for mac. The game was written by for the computer, but could be easily ported to the Macintosh. The completed game was shown at the Mac's launch and released a few months later under the title, but Apple failed to put much marketing effort into ensuring its success and the game was not a top seller. By the mid-1980s most computer companies avoided the term 'home computer' because of its association with the image of, as Compute! Wrote, 'a low-powered, low-end machine primarily suited for playing games'. Apple's, for example, denied that his company sold home computers; rather, he said, Apple sold 'computers for use in the home'.

In 1990 the company reportedly refused to support joysticks on its low-cost and computers to prevent customers from considering them as 'game machine's. Apart from a developer discount on Apple hardware, support for games developers was minimal. Game development on the Macintosh nonetheless continued, with titles such as (1986), (1986) and (1989), though mostly games for the Mac were developed alongside those for other platforms. Notable exceptions were (1993), developed on the Mac (in part using ) and only afterwards to Windows,, which spawned the franchise,,,,. As Apple was the first manufacturer to ship CD-ROM drives as standard equipment (on the and later models), many of the early CD-ROM based games were initially developed for the Mac, especially in an era of often confusing standards. In 1996 reported that, while there had been Mac-only games and PC ports with major enhancements on Macintosh, 'until recently, most games available for the Mac were more or less identical ports of PC titles'. Mac gaming was enabled with the arrival of the 3D era, since much less changes to the coding are required to port a 3D game to Macintosh than to port a 2D game.

Pippin [ ] The (also known as the Bandai Pippin) was a multimedia player based on the that ran a cut-down version of the Mac OS designed, among other things, to play games. Sold between 1996 and 1998 in Japan and the United States, it was not a commercial success, with fewer than 42,000 units sold and fewer than a thousand games and software applications supported. Attempts by Apple to promote gaming on Mac [ ].