Golkey

Mar 29, 2019  How to Download PC Games on Mac Computers - Preparing the Windows Partition Verify that your Mac has an Intel processor. Verify that your computer has a built-in keyboard and mouse, or trackpad. Ensure that your Mac is currently running an OS version of X 10.5 or later. Verify that your Mac. PC/Mac/Linux Society; install games on C:/ or D:/? If you have two HD's it better to install games on the second HD and the first has the OS+ odds and ends,+ programs.

This blog goes out to all fans who have a Mac or a PC but have never played a computer game on it. This blog goes out to all fans who look at the list of platforms we’re available on and see a list of names they don’t recognize.

We see you. We’re here to help.

Many people are looking for a nice, portable way to bring our games to a friend’s house. Or, they haven’t played one of our games before and don’t own a gaming console like an Xbox One, PS4, or Nintendo Switch.

Good news. You don’t NEED one of these platforms. If you have a Mac or PC, you’re good to go once you’ve downloaded a platform called Steam.

What is Steam?

Long story short: Steam is a free software that you download onto your computer to essentially turn it into a gaming console like an Xbox or PlayStation. It takes your drab PC and adds a dash of game spice. (Hmmmm… “Game Spice™”…. We like that.)

Once you have Steam on your PC, Mac, or Linux computer, think of Steam like a free membership service. Through Steam, you have the opportunity to buy and play a ton of games that you couldn’t previously. Steam isn’t the only platform of this nature but it’s one of the main ways people play Jackbox Games.

Your website sells PC/Mac/Linux codes on multiple platforms. What is the difference between them?

You can buy and play our games on PC and Mac on either Steam or in the Epic Store (our games are also available on Linux through Steam).

You can buy Steam codes in multiple places:

• The official Jackbox Games shop
• The Steam store itself
• The Fanatical store
• The Humble store
• The Green Man Gaming store

So you see, a lot of places sell Steam codes (and offer different sales of our games at different times)! Once they’re purchased however, you redeem them once you’re logged into your Steam account.

How do I create an account?

Click here to get started with creating a Steam account using your email address. Once it is created and verified, you’ll be prompted to choose a username and password. After that, you should be logged in!

Once on the home page, look in the upper righthand corner to Install Steam onto your computer. Once you’ve done so, you’ll be able to purchase, download, and play games.

NOTE: To access your game library on a different computer, simply Install Steam on that computer and log into your account. You will need to re-download the game on that specific computer before playing but you won’t need to repurchase the game to play.

I downloaded Steam. Now what?

Once it’s downloaded and you have Steam open on your computer, click on the “Store” tab in the upper left hand corner to find a game that you want to buy and play. If you purchased a code from a different store selling Steam codes (like our shop or Humble), then click on the “Games” tab in your toolbar and click “Activate a Product on Steam.” Follow the prompts on the screen to enter your code and begin the download process.

Still need a Jackbox Games title?

You’re almost ready to party now. All that’s missing is the game itself. Use the discount code STEAMBLOG in our shop to get 15% off a Steam code of our games now.

You can also view a complete list of our games available on Steam here. Enjoy!

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.

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.

We may earn a commission for purchases using our links. Learn more.

Another day, another iPhone 12 Pro concept. How much would you pay?

If reports are accurate we might be waiting a little while longer than normal for iPhone 12 Pro. But would you care if it looked like this?