How to play Rolling Thunder on Mac

PlatformsPortable console

Game summary

Rolling Thunder is a run and gun/action arcade game that was released by Namco in 1986 and licensed to Atari Games for US manufacture and distribution. It runs upon Namco System 86 hardware, and was later converted for the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, the Commodore 64, the Amstrad CPC, the Atari ST, the Commodore 64, and the Nintendo Family Computer. It was also featured in Namco Museum Encore. The player takes control of "Albatross", a member of the WCPO's (World Crime Police Organization) "Rolling Thunder" espionage unit. Albatross's mission is to save a missing female agent named Leila Blitz from a secret society named Geldra located in New York City. Albatross must travel through two different segments or "stories", both comprised of five stages, for a total of ten game stages. On each stage, Albatross can enter doors, to hide and take cover from enemies, as well jump over to higher or lower floors with rails, including stairs. Albatross begins this game armed with a standard-issue pistol, which can be substituted with a fully automatic assault rifle that allows for continuous firing by holding down the firing button. Albatross can gain ammunition for either weapon, by entering doors which are marked "bullets" or "arms". Despite the presence of a life meter, Albatross can only take two physical hits from the enemy: a single hit drains half of the meter, and he will be killed instantly when struck by a projectile attack such as enemy bullets or lasers. (However, all bullets can be blocked by your own).
First released: Dec 1986

Play Rolling Thunder on Mac with Parallels (virtualized)

The easiest way to play Rolling Thunder 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).

Rolling Thunder 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 Rolling Thunder like you would on any PC.
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