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Crossing Over To Play Windows Games On Your Mac

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CrossOver Games gives you the ability to play some Windows games on your Mac without running Windows.

You have to check this list of games to make sure they are what you want.

The Orange Box pack from valve is a great bargain that runs well.

If you have been waiting years to play Half-Life 2, this is the cheapest way to go.

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Crossing Over To Play Windows Games On Your Mac

By: Chris Kerins
Published: Thursday, May 1, 2008
Categories: Getting Started

So I was playing Half-Life 2 on my Mac for waaaay too long last night… "Wait a minute," you say? "Half-Life 2 on the Mac? That was never ported. And you are too broke to go out and buy Windows." All that is true. And more.

Now that I have a new Mac Pro (and a HUGE AmEx bill), the door has been cracked open to play some of the Windows-only games that I've been missing out on all these years. Yes, the Mac has some good games, but I concede the point that Windows has an immense advantage in the amount of game titles versus Macs.

Of course, running Windows on my Mac via Boot Camp would get me there, but I can't afford to go out and buy a boxed copy of Windows. Same goes for Parallels and Fusion, which I'm not sure about how well they run games anyway.

So what am I doing to get my fix? I'm running CrossOver Games from Codeweavers. Instead of running Windows on your Mac, it translates the Windows apps on the fly to work on your Mac without ever entering Windows. Here's a bit from their site:

"CodeWeavers is the leading corporate backer of the Wine Project. Wine is an open source software initiative that is systematically re-implementing the Win32 API under Unix. Wine makes it possible for PCs running Unix-based operating systems (like OS X and Linux) to run Windows application as if natively."

I've bought CrossOver Games, but they also offer CrossOver Mac to run regular Windows apps too.

What Did I Get and for How Much?

I bought Crossover Games after a 7 day free trial for $40 and Valve's The Orange Box pack of games that includes Half-Life 2 along with the 2 follow up episodes, Team Fortress 2 and Portal for $50. All in for $90 to get going.

So What's the Catch?

The compatibility is hit and miss. CrossOver Games doesn't run every Windows game. There are only a dozen or so games that have a high rating. The compatibility report is here. I've had some crashes. Particularly when I've accidentally hit the side button on my mouse, but I fixed that by adjusting my mouse prefs. Also, I have to unhook my second monitor. That seems to throw it off.

So the question is, "Is it worth it?" So far I guess my answer would be yes. Particularly for the Gravity Gun in HL2. I think the main thing that sucked me in was also The Orange Box pack. Being able to get that for $50 gets me a bunch of games for under $100, which really is more than I should be spending for games, but I can live with it when flinging sawmill blades around on screen.

If you have more money (and time) to burn though, I'd go to Staples and get a copy of XP and run it under Boot Camp.

What has been your experiences getting more gaming out of your Mac? let us know in the Comments section below!

DIG DEEPER

Here's an indepth review from bit-tech.net

CrossOver Games from Codeweavers

The Orange Box from Valve


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I've played a bit of Call of Duty 2, Unreal Tournament, Need For Speed Underground and other like those under bootcamp and the result is awesome.

I'm not a gamer but I like to have those games installed just to show them to my friends (the Windows users above all). I like to see their faces when I do that and I also like hear them say that I killed them because I have a 24" display and a machine that runs smoothly. The sniper is really effective in those circumstances but those are just excuses

Juan González
05/01/2008 at 02:06 PM

It sucks that it's for Intel based Macs only. I own a PowerPC Mac and really want this but it doesn't work.

Anon
05/27/2008 at 11:39 AM

Same I have a PowerPC Mac, and really need steam games! and my windows laptop has died so I would love to be able to run this on my Mac, is there no way of doing it?

Katt
06/29/2008 at 04:29 AM

Sorry, Katt. No Intel chip, no Steam.

Chris
06/29/2008 at 08:43 AM

Switchers and new Mac users may hear veterans refer to "performing a get info." Here's what that means, and exactly what you'll get.

-TUAW

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