How to play Alien Highway: Encounter 2 on Mac

Game summary

Highway Encounter is a strategy/action game played from a 3D isometric perspective in which you must successfully chaperone a bomb along a long, straight stretch of highway and into the alien base at the end of it. There are thirty screens to pass through and most are filled with hazards that threaten to block your progress (such as barrels) or destroy you (aliens and explosive mines). Players control a robotic "Vorton" (resembling a dalek from Doctor Who) and one of the things that provides Highway Encounter with its unique appeal is that the bomb is constantly being pushed onwards by your extra lives - four more Vortons, who accompany you along the highway. A key strategic element to the game is for the player character to travel several screens ahead of the bomb to clear a safe path for it; normally this would be done by temporarily blocking the bomb's forward motion. However, if the bomb is left in an unsafe location, it is possible for all your extra lives to be lost without the player character being destroyed once. Once all spare lives are lost, the player character must manually push the bomb.
First released: Dec 1986

Play Alien Highway: Encounter 2 on Mac with Parallels (virtualized)

The easiest way to play Alien Highway: Encounter 2 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 Highway: Encounter 2 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 Highway: Encounter 2 like you would on any PC.
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