How to play Dead or Alive on Mac

Game summary

Dead or Alive is a fighting game and the first entry in Team Ninja's long-running Dead or Alive series. Its most defining features were its speed and countering system. Dead or Alive put an emphasis on speed, and relied more on simplistic commands and reaction time. Furthermore, its countering system was the first in the fighting genre to utilize different commands that corresponded to each type of attack. There are two kinds of holds, an Offensive Hold (OH) and a Defensive Hold (DH). The latter are executed by holding back or forward on the directional pad along with the guard input to either force away or counter-damage an opponent. The Playstation port of the game was later backported for arcade and titled Dead or Alive++.
First released: Nov 1996

Play Dead or Alive on Mac with Parallels (virtualized)

The easiest way to play Dead or Alive 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).

Dead or Alive 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 Dead or Alive like you would on any PC.
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