How to play The Pirates of Dark Water on Mac

Game summary

The watery world of Mer is threatened by the deadly Dark Water. Prince Ren and his companions must find the Treasures of Rule to control the Dark Water and return Mer to its former glory. Always hot on their heels is the evil pirate-lord Bloth who wants to find the treasures to rule over Mer. Based on a cartoon series by the same name, The Pirates of Dark Water is a side scrolling fighting game similar to Final Fight or Streets of Rage. The player chooses a character, from among Prince Ren and his two companions Tula and Ioz, who differ in strength and agility, but who use the same basic attacks. There are two attack buttons, one for fast attacks and combinations and one for a single heavy attack. Other controls include: blocking attacks, grabbing and throwing opponents, dash attacks while running, and a special attack that hits multiple enemies consuming life energy at the same time. Most levels also require you to avoid obstacles like chasms, falling rocks or spikes that shoot out of the ground.
First released: May 1994

Play The Pirates of Dark Water on Mac with Parallels (virtualized)

The easiest way to play The Pirates of Dark Water 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).

The Pirates of Dark Water 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 The Pirates of Dark Water like you would on any PC.
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