How to play Thunder Zone on Mac

Game summary

Desert Assault or Thunder Zone is a isometric scrolling military themed shoot 'em up game where you take control of one of four commandos operating in the Persian gulf. Each commando has their own look and special limited bomb. As you walk through the stages you fight a variety of enemies on foot, vehicles, static guns and bosses. While playing destroyed enemies drop weapons and items to restore hit points that can be picked up. Weapons include a shotgun, machinegun, bazooka, rocket launcher and flamethrower. Sometimes a vehicle must be mounted. These include a car and some kind of desert/snowmobile. There are two and four player versions. In the slightly different Japanese version the second stage takes place in the Artic while in the other versions the second stage takes place in the desert.
First released: Feb 1991

Play Thunder Zone on Mac with Parallels (virtualized)

The easiest way to play Thunder Zone 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 Zone 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 Zone like you would on any PC.
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