How to play Thunder Spirits on Mac

Game summary

A port of the arcade-only Thunder Force AC, a modified version of Thunder Force III made specifically for the arcades with reworked graphics and all top-down stages replaced by new side-scrolling ones. Thunder Spirits puts you behind the cockpit of a lone starfighter out to destroy all the enemy forces of the Orn empire by clearing 8 enemy-infested stages set in various outer space locations. The game gives you a health-bar and the ability to swap collected weapons on the fly, which can be obtained by catching power-ups and activating them whenever you want.
First released: Feb 1991

Play Thunder Spirits on Mac with Parallels (virtualized)

The easiest way to play Thunder Spirits 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).

Thunder Spirits 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 Thunder Spirits like you would on any PC.
Did it work?
Help us improve our guide by letting us know if it worked for you.
👎👍