How to play Plutos on Mac
Game summary
Plutos is a long lost unreleased prototype developed by Tynesoft for the Atari 7800, and appears to be a loose port of the ST/Amiga game of the same name. The existence of Plutos has been known for some time, as a physical prototype has been in hands of a collector for years, but this prototype was known to be unstable and crash frequently. The source code for Plutos was discovered in 2008 and several 7800 enthusiasts were able to get it compiled and running properly on stock 7800 hardware.
Plutos is a vertically oriented space shooter that features gameplay similar to Raiden. The game features six different levels, each with its own unique theme and boss. Only three of these levels are unique graphically--the other three are just color palette changes. Plutos offers one player as well as two player simultaneous modes, selectable with the left difficulty switch. Plutos also has features a unique weapons power-up system. There are three different types of weapons, each of which can be upgraded up to four times, as well as an invincibility power-up. The three different weapons are: Dual machine guns, spread gun, and energy gun.
A partially compiled version of Plutos was discovered by Curt Vendel, and thanks to the efforts 7800 enthusiasts Robert DeCrescenzo, Mitchell Orman, and Eckhard Stolberg, made playable on 7800 hardware. It's a shame that Plutos was not released as it was obviously very close to completion and would have been a boost to the 7800 library.
First released: Dec 1987
Play Plutos on Mac with Parallels (virtualized)
The easiest way to play Plutos 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).
Plutos 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 Plutos like you would on any PC.
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