How to play EarthBound Beginnings on Mac
Game summary
EarthBound Beginnings is the first installment in the EarthBound / Mother series. It was developed by Ape Inc., Nintendo Tokyo R&D Products, and Pax Softnica, and was published by Nintendo for the Famicom on July 27, 1989.
Though officially translated into English under the name EarthBound in 1990 complete with a variety of updates and new content, the planned release of the North American localization was ultimately cancelled due to Nintendo of America ending support for the Nintendo Entertainment System.
Despite this, the updates made to the game for the English localization was included in the Japanese Mother 1+2 rerelease for Game Boy Advance in 2003. The English version was finally released on the Wii U Virtual Console on June 14th, 2015, 25 years after its intended release date.
First released: Jul 1989
Play EarthBound Beginnings on Mac with Parallels (virtualized)
The easiest way to play EarthBound Beginnings 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).
EarthBound Beginnings 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 EarthBound Beginnings like you would on any PC.
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