How to play Commander Keen: Invasion of the Vorticons on Mac

Game summary

This is the retail version of the original Commander Keen trilogy. You play the role of Billy Blaze, an 8-year old superkid who dons his brother's football helmet and becomes Commander Keen - Defender of the Earth. This trilogy is comprised of the episodes: Marooned on Mars, The Earth Explodes and Keen Must Die! In each game, Commander Keen battles aliens and monsters, wanders through mazes and solves simple puzzles to complete levels. All 3 games are based on the same classic EGA scrolling platform game engine, so the gameplay is consistent through the series. Each of these games is featured here independently.
First released: Dec 1991

Play Commander Keen: Invasion of the Vorticons on Mac with Parallels (virtualized)

The easiest way to play Commander Keen: Invasion of the Vorticons 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).

Commander Keen: Invasion of the Vorticons 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 Commander Keen: Invasion of the Vorticons like you would on any PC.
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