Any Program I Can Use To Play .exe Games On A Mac?

**Smutyaoifan** · 10-08-2009, 07:16 PM

Hi, I have a mac (how dreadful for the video game world) and I have always wanted to play some BL game at one point or another. Unfortunately, I have yet to find a program that allows me to play .exe files on my Mac. I don't think this question has been answered, but if it has, sorry for the inconvenience and please direct me to the thread.

**andri12** · 10-08-2009, 09:52 PM

there is only one good program wrapper it called wine it runs plenty of games just fine on mine linux computer the other thing that you can do is runing virtual machine like VirtualBox and run windows xp

**eliddell** · 10-10-2009, 04:05 PM

Let me amplify andri12's reply a bit.

WINE is a Windows compatibility layer that will allow many (but not all) Windows programs to run on Mac OSX and other *NIX and BSD based operating systems on machines with Intel-style CPUs. Installing it may be somewhat involved--read the WINE Project's OSX FAQ for details. Some programs will run properly only if you can provide them with native Windows DLLs, which you will have to download separately or copy over from a Windows machine.

Your second choice is to install an actual copy of Windows inside a virtual machine. There are several different virtual machine programs out there, but the only one I'm aware of that's free and will work on a Mac is Sun's VirtualBox. I've had mixed results with the Linux version of this program--it's kind of picky about what versions of Windows it will let you install. VMWare is more reliable, but their Mac product, VMWare Fusion, costs money. Regardless of which virtualization program you choose, you will need a Windows install CD to make this work.

Your third choice is to run a true emulator such as qemu. I don't recommend this, as they tend to be slower than tranquilized snails.

Your fourth choice is to set up your Mac as a dual-boot machine with a copy of Windows on it. Others can no doubt give you specific advice on how to do this. It's the most reliable method, but it sucks to have to reboot your comp every time you want to play a game.

Good luck.