How to play Challenge of the Ancient Empires on Mac

PlatformsComputer

Game summary

As a Super Solver, your job is to recover the hidden treasures of the ancient world in 4 caverns (Greece & Rome, Egypt, India & China and Near East) to reach the fifth and final cavern where the ultimate challenge awaits you. Challenge of the Ancient Empires is a platform game, divided into 5 levels (called "caverns"), each of which includes 4 sub-levels ("chambers"). In each chamber you have to collect 6 pieces of an ancient artifact and assemble them like a jigsaw puzzle. The chambers are full of dangerous animals which you have to avoid. There's some food you can collect to regain lost health though. The chambers are also full of puzzles, usually involving manipulation of switches. You have 3 tools with you - a helmet with a headlight, jumping shoes and shields. The helmet emits a beam of light when activated; it is used to solve puzzles that rely on rotating prisms to direct a light beam to a switch. The jumping shoes allow you to, well, jump higher. The shield protects you from enemies for a short time when activated, but you have a limited number of shields and they need to be used wisely.
First released: Feb 1990

Play Challenge of the Ancient Empires on Mac with Parallels (virtualized)

The easiest way to play Challenge of the Ancient Empires 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).

Challenge of the Ancient Empires 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 Challenge of the Ancient Empires like you would on any PC.
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