How to play Blue Lightning on Mac

Game summary

Blue Lightning, a launch title for the Lynx, is an arcade flight game heavily based on After Burner. The player controls the prototype Blue Lightning jet in combat against the enemy. The game consists of nine missions with varied objectives. These range from shooting down enemy planes to taking out tanks and ships or radar installations. In a courier mission, documents must be delivered by landing on a certain airfield. Upon successfully completing a mission, a password is given. The action is seen from behind the Blue Lightning. With the heavy arcade focus, there is no danger of stalling or even crashing into the ground. Crashing into air or ground targets is possible, however. The Blue Lightning is armed with a cannon with unlimited ammunition and 40 missiles. The on-board computer automatically seeks missile lock for enemy targets while the cannon must of course be aimed manually. The Blue Lightning is also equipped with an afterburner: activating it puts the plane to maximum speed for ten seconds, allowing one to catch up to enemy targets that got away. After use it takes another ten seconds to recharge. The plane is also able to pull off a barrel roll, useful to lose the lock of enemy missiles.
First released: Dec 1989

Play Blue Lightning on Mac with Parallels (virtualized)

The easiest way to play Blue Lightning 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).

Blue Lightning 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 Blue Lightning like you would on any PC.
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