How to play Tempest X3 on Mac

Game summary

In Tempest X3, a port of Tempest 2000 for the PlayStation, you control a claw that perches and crawls around the outer edge of a series of geometrically shaped, tube-like constructs, shooting down or out into the nebulous void of outer space. From the core of this void, fuseballs, rockets, pulsars, tankers and other hazardous aliens and alien artifacts move toward your ship. Once you clear a screen, you fly into the void and onto the next level. Watch out for spikes as you advance. This game features three modes of play: Classic Tempest, which is based on the early 1980s Arcade smash simply titled Tempest; an update of Tempest called Tempest X, which features a jump feature, A.I. Droids that help you fight and enhanced graphics and sound; and Tempest Duel, which pits you against a friend and the Generator, which cranks out an endless source of enemies. Tempest X3, the Sony PlayStation version, was released in 1996, with updated graphics and sound, although the following gameplay differences from the original version were identified by Jeff Minter in a Usenet post: - The "AI Droid" only follows the player, instead of acting autonomously. A new, "Mega Droid" powerup rectifies this somewhat, but it takes a very long time within a level to acquire it. - Pulsars now move slowly around the top of the Web if they reach it (rather than electrifying the whole top edge the moment they arrive). The Particle Laser is no more effective than the normal laser against Spikes (in the original, it destroys them very quickly). - Some of the harder, "sticking point" webs have been removed from the game entirely. - Entering the name "YIFF!" or "H_V_S" on the top highscore position activates a secret mode, allowing the user to choose to play the original Tempest 2000 game.[30] Any high scores made in this mode are not saved, the music (wave-captured from the original modules) is muffled and the effectiveness of the Particle Laser against spikes is not restored. The PlayStation ver
First released: Nov 1996

Play Tempest X3 on Mac with Parallels (virtualized)

The easiest way to play Tempest X3 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).

Tempest X3 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 Tempest X3 like you would on any PC.
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