How to play Mail Plane on Mac
Game summary
As far as Vectrex games go, the holy grail for many collectors and gamers is the unreleased flight simulator, Mail Plane. This quirky take on the tried and tested genre made use of the obscure light-pen accessory to control the airborne vehicle tasking you with delivering letters. Unfortunately nobody got to experience this unique offering back in the day following the games cancellation.
Having said that, the moment many of these deprived gamers had been waiting for finally arrived in November - a Mail Plane prototype cartridge surfaced on eBay in Pennsylvania, United States. Selling for a massive $877, one lucky bidder had finally secured the chance to experience this oddity once and for all, however, they had bigger plans for this title.
Understanding the demand for this long lost title, AtariAge user Vectrexer - the new owner of this Mail Plane prototype - decided to generously create a ROM image of the game cartridge and release it online for free to the masses.
As of today we can all finally experience Mail Plane in its original form, although there are a few more issues present. Not only do we need a Vectrex flash cartridge to load the ROM on to, but also the incredibly difficult to source Light Pen accessory.
First released: Feb 1983
Play Mail Plane on Mac with Parallels (virtualized)
The easiest way to play Mail Plane 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).
Mail Plane 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 Mail Plane like you would on any PC.
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