How to play NFL Football 1989 on Mac

Game summary

The first official NFL licensed game in over ten years. Released exclusively for the NES, it intended to loosely represent the 1988-89 season of the National Football League, the game uses the teams and play formations of that particular era while avoiding usage of the players' names, due to a lack of an NFLPA license, which was given to Tecmo's Tecmo Bowl.
First released: Dec 1989

Play NFL Football 1989 on Mac with Parallels (virtualized)

The easiest way to play NFL Football 1989 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).

NFL Football 1989 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 NFL Football 1989 like you would on any PC.
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