How to play Cave of the Word Wizard on Mac

Game summary

This edutainment game for the Commodore 64 required players to spell specific words in order to progress through the titular Wizard's cave. Successfully spelling words gives the player name-brand adhesive bandages useful for treating snake bites and scorpion stings. Failing to spell words correctly causes the wizard to drain energy from your flashlight. The game ends when you run out of bandages, run out of light, or if you can successfully collect all four crystals and escape the cave. The game impressively relied on the Commodore 64's ability to produce recorded voice clips. Whether it did so successfully is a matter of debate.
First released: Dec 1982

Play Cave of the Word Wizard on Mac with Parallels (virtualized)

The easiest way to play Cave of the Word Wizard 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).

Cave of the Word Wizard 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 Cave of the Word Wizard like you would on any PC.
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