Hello everyone!
Ever since I switched to the Mac, I've only really had one regret. I wished to play some of my old favorite audio games on the Mac. Parallels is a bit overcomplicated and resource heavy for my needs, but I've discovered with crossover by code weavers:
https://www.codeweavers.com/crossover
one can actually play a lot of audio games on the Mac.
Some caveats:
1. anything that needs sapi5 is out.
2. You may be able to run NVDA along with a game in the same bottle but this has not yet been tried and tested. If someone feels like testing this, please feel free to post a comment and I will update this guide.
3. Unfortunately things written in VB6 are out. This includes older l-works games, BSC games and XLStudios games, among others.
4. You will need sighted help to run the installers. I plan in the near future to set up pre prepared bottles to mitigate this for certain games but I just haven't had the time to do that yet.
5. PBGames are out as they are written in the HTA format, and are not .exe natively.
So what does work?
Currently, I have tested a few games and found them working.
super egg hunt plus: works perfectly!
last crusade: works perfectly except for unusually long loading times for levels.
q9 action game (Swedish version): works perfectly.
q9 action game (English version): works well, with caveat that my key doesn't seem to be working for an unrelated reason so can't test registration system. It should theoretically work though.
Self voicing games written in BGT work well.
So how does this work?
1. download a trial of crossover from the link above.
2. Install crossover like any other Mac app.
3. Launch it, press "install a windows application"
4. Download the setup for the application you want to play.
5. Type in the name of the app, and pick the game name (unlisted application) from the search results table.
6. In the set of radio buttons on top, click select installer.
7. Interact with the grid and navigate around until you get a browse file dialog, select the application.
8. Click the "select bottle" radio button, pick "new windows XP bottle" or "new windows 7 bottle" depending on how new the game is, and press continue.
9. Keep following the wizard until you get a separate wine window, this is where you will need help to click next next next until setup is done.
10. In your list of bottles in crossover, find the bottle where you installed the game , go to the context menu and press "run commands"
11. browse around the windows tree (which is actually your bottle) until you find the .exe, and press ok, then run.
With luck the game will start and you'll be able to play!
If you have any questions feel free to post a comment here and I'll try to answer them.