How to play Idol Hakkenden on Mac

Game summary

Idol Hakkenden (アイドル八犬伝?) is a Japan-exclusive text adventure video game developed by Natsume and published by Towa Chiki in 1989 for the Family Computer. Erika, an aspiring musician and pop idol, must foil a plot that could ruin her music career. As a Japanese adventure game, players must select through menus of dialogue in order to determine her future. Friends (and sometimes rivals) of Erika give her advice on what to do next. There are six songs in the game; all of them belonging to the J-pop genre. Erika must master them all in order to become the greatest idol in all of Japan. Lyrics are not sung by a voice actor; they are shown on the bottom of the screen instead.
First released: Sep 1989

Play Idol Hakkenden on Mac with Parallels (virtualized)

The easiest way to play Idol Hakkenden 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).

Idol Hakkenden 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 Idol Hakkenden like you would on any PC.
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