How to play Gandhara on Mac

Game summary

Gandhara refers to the capital of the Kushan Empire, (today's Pakistan and Afghanistan), founded in 1st century BC, whose rulers were Buddhists; it was one of the most flourishing Buddhist states in history. The story of the game, however, is based on pure mythology, featuring Buddhist deities in their distinctly Japanese incarnations. The protagonist is contacted by the bodhisattva Akasagarbha (known as Kokūzō in Japan, from the Chinese Xukongzang), who tells him that the world is in danger: the king of demons is trying to locate and neutralize the holy Ashes of Buddha, whose power protects the eight worlds. The hero's task is to find the ashes and defeat whomever the king of demons might send to stop him. One of Enix's works that were unreleased outside of Japan, Gandhara is an action RPG with rather simple gameplay mechanics. The player navigates the hero through hostile top-down areas, fighting constantly respawning enemies with sword or magical spells. Rations must be bought in order to keep the hero alive. Defeated enemies grant the protagonist experience points; once a certain amount of those is accumulated, the hero levels up and grows stronger.
First released: Feb 1988

Play Gandhara on Mac with Parallels (virtualized)

The easiest way to play Gandhara 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).

Gandhara 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 Gandhara like you would on any PC.
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