How to play Thunderhawk on Mac

Game summary

Thunderhawk (AH-3 Thunderstrike in North America) is a combat flight simulator video game developed by Core Design and released for the Amiga and DOS in 1992, for the Sega CD in 1993 and for Microsoft Windows in 1996. In the game the player flies a fictional AH-73M attack helicopter. The game consists of several campaigns for each one of ten world areas. The campaigns are themed around real events or activities in these areas (e.g. escorting a UN humanitarian convoy during the Bosnian War, fighting pirates in the South China Sea, etc.) A typical campaign consists of four or five missions. Each mission has a primary objective that must be completed to successfully complete the mission, there are other targets in each missions such as tanks and SAM launchers but these are only used to help the player boost their score. The primary target is usually a major structure like an enemy base or a bridge. Usually the player is equipped with a standard set of weapons - 16 missiles, 76 rockets, and a machine gun with unlimited ammunition. On some special missions the rockets are replaced by a weapon that is critical to the success of that particular mission, such as a runway cratering system when the primary objective is to destroy an airbase or a bomb when destruction of a bridge is the primary objective. The control system for Thunderhawk was fairly unique for the platforms supporting a mouse. It used the mouse for basic control, plus some keyboard input for rarely used commands. Moving the mouse would tilt the helicopter in the specified direction, and make it start moving in that direction. Pressing the left mouse button fires weapons. When the right mouse button was held, moving the mouse up and down changed altitude, while side to side yawed the helicopter side to side.
First released: Dec 1992

Play Thunderhawk on Mac with Parallels (virtualized)

The easiest way to play Thunderhawk 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).

Thunderhawk 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 Thunderhawk like you would on any PC.
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