How to play Splat! on Mac

Game summary

The player guides Zippy, an X-shaped sprite, around a maze, viewed top-down, with solid walls, hazards and collectable rewards. The view of the maze scrolls randomly right, left, up or down. The object is for the player to survive for a period of time without making contact with either an edge of the playing area, represented as a brick walls, or hazards including water and spikes, all of which lose a life. If the player survives they receive a score bonus for completing the level and they proceed to the next level, which is a continuation of the maze, with less interval between scrolling steps and a shorter level duration. The first level lasts about two minutes, and by the seventh and final level this is down to about forty seconds. Points are awarded for collecting plums and clumps of grass, some of which are invisible. Completing a level of the game triggers a voice saying "Yippee!". On the ZX Spectrum release this was remarkable due to it overcoming the Spectrum's rudimentary sound capabilities. It was a very early use of digitized speech sound effects in home computer games.
First released: Dec 1983

Play Splat! on Mac with Parallels (virtualized)

The easiest way to play Splat! 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).

Splat! 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 Splat! like you would on any PC.
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