How to play Gold Rush on Mac

Game summary

Gold Rush is a 1-player wild west themed arcade game for the Apple II. The player controls a small character who can move in the 4 cardinal directions. The player moves about a small wild west-themed screen, with the goal of excavating gold from the four mines on the left of the screen. The player arrives via railroad at the right of the screen at the beginning of the game, with the goal is to pick up sticks of dynamite, and place them next to the four mine shafts on the left. The player must avoid Native Americans near their teepees and soldiers guarding their fort. There is also a dangerous grizzly bear who can take the player's life. Claim jumpers haunt the mining sites, and like to return the player to their starting zone.
First released: Dec 1982

Play Gold Rush on Mac with Parallels (virtualized)

The easiest way to play Gold Rush 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).

Gold Rush 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 Gold Rush like you would on any PC.
Did it work?
Help us improve our guide by letting us know if it worked for you.
👎👍