How to play Protector II on Mac

Game summary

An arcade style game with a loose basis on the arcade hit Defender, Protector II is a side-scrolling shooter. Like Defender, there are lots of different aliens to contend with, and some ground based enemies as well. There are no smart bombs, however. You have to rescue humans as well (twice) from both an alien ship, and later a city that will be overrun with lava from a volcano that erupts during the game; all the while protecting them from aliens. You then have to drop them one at a time (unlike Defender, you can only carry one human at a time) into a teleporter tube to get them off the planet entirely. The game is quite difficult, with some very precise flying required at times (probably even more difficult than Defender or Stargate). It also has more of a "plot" than the arcade games it is based on, with several sub-missions of rescue depending on what stage you are at (it should be noted that there is no breaks between "stages" - the whole game play is continuous).
First released: Dec 1982

Play Protector II on Mac with Parallels (virtualized)

The easiest way to play Protector II 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).

Protector II 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 Protector II like you would on any PC.
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