How to play Halo Wars on Mac

Game summary

The Covenant has declared war on humanity, and Harvest is the first battleground. Set 21 years before the events of Halo: Combat Evolved, Halo Wars is an exciting real-time strategy game set in the legendary Halo universe. In this unique installment in the Halo franchise, players experience the epic battles that marked the beginning of the Covenant War. With the UNSC Spirit of Fire at their disposal, players fight in the intense and enormous conflicts that would define humanity's relentless heroism in its darkest hour.
First released: Feb 2009

Play Halo Wars on Mac with Parallels (virtualized)

The easiest way to play Halo Wars 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).

Halo Wars 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 Halo Wars like you would on any PC.
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