How to play Populous II: Trials of the Olympian Gods on Mac

Game summary

As the offspring of almighty Zeus, you demand a seat among the gods. But before ascending to the top of Mt. Olympus, you must first defeat some of the most powerful deities in the Greek pantheon. Such a task would be impossible for a puny mortal, but you wield the raw power of the universe in your hands, for you are destined to become a god! Learn to shatter the sky with lightning and shower the earth with fire. Summon heroes to aid your people, and plagues to destroy the enemy. Call forth tornadoes, hurricanes, tidal waves, and columns of flame. The second installment of Bullfrog's Populous series follows the path set by its predecessor and remains one of the greatest god-games ever created. Populous 2: Trials of the Olympian Gods vastly improves the formula by adding new spells, better quality sound and graphics, and a character development system that allows you to customize your divine powers in any way you want. You really can’t go wrong with a game where you can kill gods, obliterate entire continents, and strike down upon the infidels with great vengeance and furious anger. Just as Peter Molyneux, those things simply never get old.
First released: Dec 1991

Play Populous II: Trials of the Olympian Gods on Mac with Parallels (virtualized)

The easiest way to play Populous II: Trials of the Olympian Gods 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).

Populous II: Trials of the Olympian Gods 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 Populous II: Trials of the Olympian Gods like you would on any PC.
Did it work?
Help us improve our guide by letting us know if it worked for you.
👎👍