How to play Alien 8 on Mac

Game summary

Alien 8 is an action-adventure video game developed and published by Ultimate Play The Game. It was released for the ZX Spectrum, BBC Micro, Amstrad CPC and MSX in 1985.[a] The game is a spiritual successor to the best-selling Knight Lore, which was lauded by critics for its isometric graphics. In the game, the player takes control of a robot, Alien 8, whose job is to ensure that all of the cryogenically frozen passengers on board a starship remain viable during the ship's voyage. The game was written by Chris Stamper, and graphics were designed by Tim Stamper. Alien 8 uses the same image masking technique as Knight Lore, which allows the developers to create composite structures out of stacked images without visual overlay. The technique was copyrighted by Ultimate as the Filmation game engine. As with its spiritual predecessor, the game is rendered isometric projection.[2] The game was critically acclaimed upon release. Reviewers praised the game's graphics and innovation, however minor criticism was directed at its similarities to Knight Lore.
First released: Feb 1985

Play Alien 8 on Mac with Parallels (virtualized)

The easiest way to play Alien 8 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).

Alien 8 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 Alien 8 like you would on any PC.
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