How to play Fleet Commander on Mac

Game summary

Fleet Commander is a strategy game developed and published by ASCII Entertainment for the Famicom in 1988. It is the first naval battle game ever released for the system. While it supposedly depicts a battle between two fictional countries, the game is largely recognized to be a recreation of one of the crucial naval battles that occurred between Japan and the United States near the end of World War II. Players control a Japanese fleet of heavy cruisers, battleships, submarines and aircraft carriers. A couple of things set this game apart from typical Famicom games. First, in addition to the cartridge and the manual, the game also came packaged with a large map and plastic models which represented ships and airplanes. The game never shows the entire state of the water, so it is up to the player to use the information that he or she has to update the representation of battle on the map using the plastic models. Second, no background music is heard while playing this game. Finally, this game makes use of a device known as the "Turbo File," which was manufactured and sold by ASCII as well. This device was a hardware add-on for the Famicom which was used to save game progress. It was compatible with a number of other titles.
First released: Apr 1988

Play Fleet Commander on Mac with Parallels (virtualized)

The easiest way to play Fleet Commander 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).

Fleet Commander 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 Fleet Commander like you would on any PC.
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