How to play Gomoku Narabe Renju on Mac

PlatformsPortable console

Game summary

A board game simulation for the Famicom. The goal is to line up five pieces in a row. Gomoku Narabe Renju is a video game simulation of a traditional Eastern board game that uses the board and pieces from the popular board game Go. It plays a lot like the American board game Connect Four, in which the goal is to line up a series of five tiles horizontally, vertically or diagonally before the other player can do the same. Two players take it in turns to place a single Go tile on the board, attempting to craft their own lines while strategically placing tiles that blocks the opponent from finishing theirs. While the normal board game is simply referred to as "Gomoku Narabe" (Five Pieces in a Row, occasionally translated as Gobang), the Renju modifier is an additional rule that makes it harder for the player with the black pieces to win. Because the black player always begins each game (like how the white player always begins each game of Chess), this additional rule is thought to even the playing field. The rule is that the black player will lose if they build a line of six or more pieces: this counts as going "overlong" and counts as a loss. Gomoku Narabe Renju is the fourth video game ever released on the Famicom, and the first original game produced for the system (the previous three - Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr. and Popeye - were all ports of arcade games). It was released the same day (August 27th, 1983) as the Famicom version of Mahjong, another board game adaptation.
First released: Aug 1983

Play Gomoku Narabe Renju on Mac with Parallels (virtualized)

The easiest way to play Gomoku Narabe Renju 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).

Gomoku Narabe Renju 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 Gomoku Narabe Renju like you would on any PC.
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