How to play Guitar Hero 5 on Mac

PlatformsPortable console

Game summary

Guitar Hero 5 (initially referred to as Guitar Hero V) is a music rhythm game and the fifth main entry in the Guitar Hero series. The game was developed by Neversoft and published by Activision, and released internationally in September 2009 for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 2, 3 and Wii consoles. Similar to the preceding title, Guitar Hero World Tour, Guitar Hero 5 is geared towards playing in a four-person band experience, including lead and bass guitar, drums, and vocals. The game is available as a standalone title, allowing players to use existing compatible instrument controllers, and as a bundle that provides these controllers. Guitar Hero 5 adds several new features, such as drop-in/drop-out play, bands composed of any combination of available instruments, a Rockfest competitive mode consisting of several various scoring mechanisms, and both song-specific and general Challenges to unlock new avatars, clothing, and other extras in the game. Many of these changes were added to make the game a more social experience, allowing players across a range of skill levels to be able to play cooperatively and competitively against each other both locally and online. Guitar Hero 5's track list contains 85 songs by 83 separate artists, and like previous Guitar Hero games, several musicians with works in the game have been modeled through motion capture for playable characters in the game, including Johnny Cash, Carlos Santana, Shirley Manson, Matthew Bellamy, and Kurt Cobain. Players can also create their own character and instrument to play with. The game continues to support the user-created music studio introduced in World Tour through GHTunes, and additional downloadable content for the game was also made available. A majority of existing downloadable tracks from World Tour are forward-compatible with Guitar Hero 5, along with selected on-disc tracks from World Tour and Guitar Hero Smash Hits, and songs from the game could also be exported for a fee to play in its seque
First released: Sep 2009

Play Guitar Hero 5 on Mac with Parallels (virtualized)

The easiest way to play Guitar Hero 5 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).

Guitar Hero 5 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 Guitar Hero 5 like you would on any PC.
Did it work?
Help us improve our guide by letting us know if it worked for you.
👎👍