How to play Ad Astra on Mac

Game summary

Ad Astra is an early into-the-screen 3D space shoot 'em up. Your craft is viewed in front of you, with the first task being to dart in between the planets which hurtle towards you. Once this is passed, the serious business of shooting down the enemy craft begins. These shoot at you from a distance, and your angle of attack varies depending on the angle at which you are flying into the screen, in a sort of trick-3D. Landmines (shoot these before they disintegrate towards you) and flying saucers (which don't shoot at you, but must be shot several times), before the task of noting down a code to enable you to progress to the next moon, from which the whole task begins again with increased difficulty. The game keeps track of how long you have been playing each game, as well as a high score.
First released: Dec 1984

Play Ad Astra on Mac with Parallels (virtualized)

The easiest way to play Ad Astra on a Mac is through Parallels, which allows you to virtualize a Windows machine on Macs. The setup is very easy and it works for Apple Silicon Macs as well as for older Intel-based Macs.

Parallels supports the latest version of DirectX and OpenGL, allowing you to play the latest PC games on any Mac. The latest version of DirectX is up to 20% faster.

Our favorite feature of Parallels Desktop is that when you turn off your virtual machine, all the unused disk space gets returned to your main OS, thus minimizing resource waste (which used to be a problem with virtualization).

Ad Astra installation steps for Mac

Step 1
Go to Parallels.com and download the latest version of the software.
Step 2
Follow the installation process and make sure you allow Parallels in your Mac’s security preferences (it will prompt you to do so).
Step 3
When prompted, download and install Windows 10. The download is around 5.7GB. Make sure you give it all the permissions that it asks for.
Step 4
Once Windows is done installing, you are ready to go. All that’s left to do is install Ad Astra like you would on any PC.
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