How to play Car Wars on Mac

Game summary

In this combination racing game and maze game, you have to maneuver your race car around the track, clearing the dots from all five lanes. The catch is, there's another car (controlled by the computer) driving around the track, in the opposite direction, bent on stopping you. You have to be quick with the lane changes, or the computer car will crash into you. You start with three cars, and can gain extra cars by clearing all the dots from the track. But watch out! The computer adds an an additional opponent on the third round, and another every second round after that!
First released: Dec 1981

Play Car Wars on Mac with Parallels (virtualized)

The easiest way to play Car Wars 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).

Car Wars 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 Car Wars like you would on any PC.
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