How to play Theatre Europe on Mac

Game summary

Theatre Europe is a turn-based strategy video game developed and published by Personal Software Services. It was first released in the United Kingdom for the Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC and Atari 8-bit home computers in 1985. It was later released in France by ERE Informatique in 1986, and was released in the United States by Datasoft later that year. It was also ported to the Tatung Einstein home computer in 1989, exclusively in the United Kingdom. It is the fifth instalment of the Strategic Wargames series. The game is set during a fictional war in Europe between NATO and the Warsaw Pact, in which both sides use nuclear and chemical weapons against each other. The main objective of the game is to fight conventional battles in continental Europe, whilst trying to avoid a worldwide nuclear holocaust. Throughout the game, various capital cities and their civilian populations will be destroyed by nuclear weapons; the game will only end once either side is forced to surrender or if the entire population of Europe perishes. In order to request a nuclear strike, the player was required to call a dedicated telephone number, which led to an automated message announcing the authorisation code. During development, the developers obtained extensive information and statistics of military strength from the Ministry of Defence and the Soviet embassy in London. Theatre Europe gained national controversy upon release, receiving criticism from both the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) and The Sun newspaper. Some high street retail chains refused to sell the game upon release. Despite the controversy, the game received critical acclaim from reviewers. Praise was directed at its accuracy, playability and value for money. It won the "Best Strategy Game" award at the 1985 Golden Joystick Awards and was nominated for the "Game of the Year" title.
First released: Dec 1985

Play Theatre Europe on Mac with Parallels (virtualized)

The easiest way to play Theatre Europe 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).

Theatre Europe 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 Theatre Europe like you would on any PC.
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