How to play Thrust on Mac

Game summary

The aim is to pilot a spacecraft which must pick up a pod using a tractor beam and fly it into space. The ship and pod are subject to gravity and inertia, and being connected by a stiff rod can end up spinning around each other, out of control. Hitting the walls of the cave with either the ship or the pod results in death. Each planet has turrets which fire bullets at the ship, which can be destroyed with a single shot, and a reactor which powers the defence system of each planet. If the reactor is shot enough the turrets will cease firing for a short amount of time. Hitting the reactor with many bullets causes it to go critical and destroy the planet in 10 seconds - the ship must escape into space before this happens, with or without the pod (more points are gained if the pod is present). Fuel is needed to manœuvre the ship and can be collected with the tractor beam, if the ship runs out of fuel the whole game is over. A shield is also available, although when activated it uses fuel and the ship cannot shoot.
First released: Dec 1986

Play Thrust on Mac with Parallels (virtualized)

The easiest way to play Thrust 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).

Thrust 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 Thrust like you would on any PC.
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