How to play Alien Storm on Mac

PlatformsPlatform, Portable console, Computer

Game summary

Alien Storm is a side-scrolling beat 'em up. The game resembles Golden Axe, with a similar artistic style, three playable characters (a man, a woman, and a novelty character) and pick-up or power-up special attacks. The player (one player only on the Master System version, up to two players on the Mega Drive version, three on the arcade version) selects from the three different characters to embark upon a quest to save the Earth from an alien invasion. All of the Busters are playable from the beginning of the game. There are 6 missions to complete (8 in the Mega Drive version) with several stages, and each mission has the player blasting aliens, from the streets to the mother ship, where the mother of all aliens can be found. This task becomes increasingly difficult with each new mission, and the aliens are capable of hiding inside objects such as plants, postboxes, trashcans, drums, and other items. Each mission has an objective such as rescuing people or destroying an UFO. When dealing with a few aliens, flying heads will appear, which can be shot to collect life or energy. Energy is used specifically to power the energy based attacks of the player's weapon (such as flames or electricity) and to use the much more powerful special weapons. In a similar format as other early Sega arcade games, each character has unlimited usage of various short-range attacks, i.e. punches, kicks. Along with these standard attacks, each character has their own individual weapon (Garth's weapon that shoots lightning is replaced with a flame weapon in the Master System version). Special attacks are also included, and vary depending on the character chosen at the start of the game. For instance, Garth summons an U.S. Air Force starship that drops bombs across the street (in the Master System version he has Karen's special, a ballistic missile strike). Scooter will teleport out of his present location and leave a series of bombs that will blow up on the appearance of aliens, after whi
First released: Dec 1990

Play Alien Storm on Mac with Parallels (virtualized)

The easiest way to play Alien Storm 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 Storm 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 Storm like you would on any PC.
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