How to play Populous on Mac

Game summary

Miracles are child's play. Earthquakes are serious fun. The all-powerful can perform miracles in their sleep. But omnipotence isn't what it used to be. These days, it takes awesome natural disasters to dominate a world. You give them good land. You tell them when to farm and when to fight. You make them content beyond their wildest dreams. But then they become raging arsonists. What's a deity to do? Disasters are your divine prerogative - volcanoes, quakes, swamps. For stubborn non-believers, nothing beats a flood for spring cleaning. Cruel ice, lush grassland, parched desert... With 500 worlds, a deity's work is never done. Populous is the original god-game, a strategy title that lets you shape the isometric isometric world and the fates of its inhabitants. Be sure to check out one of Bullfrog's earliest classics, from the mind of Peter Molyneux!
First released: Jun 1989

Play Populous on Mac with Parallels (virtualized)

The easiest way to play Populous 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 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 like you would on any PC.
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