How to play Brain Drain on Mac

PlatformsPortable console

Game summary

Brain Drain is a puzzle game in which the player has to recreate a pattern, consisting of different symbols like apples or hearts, which is shown in the corner of the screen. The main playing field consists of said symbols, but randomly switched around. The player controls a frame which encloses four of the symbols. When pressing a button, the symbols are rotated clockwise around the frame. Of course the levels have to be solved within a time limit. In the higher difficulty levels, the player also has to deal with so-called special effects which occasionally kick in during play, e.g. some symbols get hidden by "?" blocks, symbols rotate on their own or the controls are reversed. Three power-ups can be earned by completing bonus levels or finishing a level really fast: clock (stops time for 20 seconds), flash (skips the current level) and credit (gives a second try after time has run out). Clock and flash have to be activated manually; credits is applied automatically. Besides the regular playing mode, there is also the "Brain Race" available which involves solving a certain number of levels (depending on the difficulty) as fast as possible.
First released: Apr 1998

Play Brain Drain on Mac with Parallels (virtualized)

The easiest way to play Brain Drain 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).

Brain Drain 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 Brain Drain like you would on any PC.
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