How to play Paris-Dakar Rally Special! on Mac
Game summary
A NES game based on the famed Paris-Dakar Rally, developed by ISCO. While ostensibly a racing game, the style of gameplay tends to change per level.
Paris-Dakar Rally Special! is an unusual racing game in which the player must successfully win the Paris-Dakar Rally. However, in order to do so, the player is faced with a wide variety of odd challenges to overcome, a scant number of which actually involve racing.
Developed by ISCO for the NES, Paris-Dakar Rally is notorious for its bizarre structure. Depending on who is asked it is either a testament to the NES library's occasionally creative and off-beat ingenuity, or a legendary "kusoge" (crap game).
Stage 1 - Preparation
In the first stage the player is without vehicle. In order to race in the Paris-Dakar Rally, the player must first acquire a sponsor, some money, a car and a navigation partner. In order to achieve these objectives, the player must walk around town and talk to the right order of sponsors, executives, bank tellers and rally co-ordinators to begin. Once the car has been purchased and a navigation partner chosen (which is resolved with a fast reactions mini-game), the player can take a plane to Paris to begin the rally.
Stage 2 - First Day
The first day races most closely resemble an actual racing game. The player has a top-down view of a vertically-scrolling track and must control the car's speed and direction with the D-pad. In order to qualify for the next stage of the event, the player must make it through the course within a time limit while dodging hostile vehicles from behind and in front. Losing three lives restarts the stage.
Stage 3 - Second Day
This mode more closely resembles the Arcade game Rally-X. The player must maneuver and corner around the Parisian streets in order to avoid rival drivers. They can distract pursuing CPU opponents by dropping rubber balls (possibly tires) behind the player's car to deter them.
Stage 4 - Third Day
The action changes to a side-scrolling perspectiv
First released: Mar 1988
Play Paris-Dakar Rally Special! on Mac with Parallels (virtualized)
The easiest way to play Paris-Dakar Rally Special! 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).
Paris-Dakar Rally Special! 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 Paris-Dakar Rally Special! like you would on any PC.
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