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How to play Mac games

/ How to play / Mac games

Macintosh emulation is quite hard to achieve: you'll have to try and fail a lot, and do a lot of research. But it got much easier over the years, and you can now try many games right in your browser.

About 2,300 Mac games are available on MyAbandonware, from the black and white games of the first Macs to the Mac OS X games of the 2000s. The emulator you need depends on the age of the game.

The quickest way: Infinite Mac

Infinite Mac runs classic Mac systems in your browser, from System 1 to Mac OS X 10.4. Nothing to install, no ROM to find: pick a system and it starts.

On some systems, you can drag and drop a file or a disk image from your computer into the window to get it inside the emulated Mac. It's the easiest way to try a game. For games you want to keep playing, or games that need more power, install an emulator as explained below.

Disc images work best. In our test, we dropped the Deer Hunter ISO file on Mac OS 9. It showed on the Mac desktop as a disc, and the game installer started.

The Deer Hunter disc image, dropped on Mac OS 9 in Infinite Mac: the disc shows on the desktop and the installer starts. The start of Mac OS 9 is sped up 8 times.

.sit archives are less reliable. Some do not mount at all, and some mount but do not run. Try the game on several versions of the system. To choose a version, open the game on MobyGames and click the Specs tab. It may list the Mac system the game needs.

Which emulator for which game?

Pick the emulator from the year of the game and the Mac system it needs. Install and configure only one emulator first, and try the game in it: many games work in several of them.

  • Games from the 80s and early 90s (System 6 and earlier, black and white): Mini vMac, which emulates the Mac Plus. Some games were still made for these small Macs in the early 90s.
  • Games from 1991 to 1996 (System 7 to Mac OS 8.1): Basilisk II, which emulates the 68k Macs, in color.
  • Games from the mid 90s to 2002 (Mac OS 8.5 to 9.0.4): SheepShaver, which emulates a PowerPC Mac. It runs most of the classic Mac games.
  • Mac OS 9.2 and Mac OS X games (up to Mac OS X 10.5): QEMU, which emulates a PowerPC G4 Mac. Slower and harder to set up than the others. It runs on Mac and Linux. We found no ready-to-use setup for Windows: on Windows, use Infinite Mac for these systems.

Basilisk II and SheepShaver are no longer developed by their original authors: get the recent builds from the E-Maculation forums, linked from the setup guides below. Since 2025, these builds run natively on Apple Silicon Macs, as well as on Windows and Linux.

Mini vMac: the quick setup on Windows

For the old black and white Macs, get a ready-to-use system and its ROM from the Internet Archive, and copy two files next to Mini vMac. No installation of the Mac system is needed.

  1. Download the Windows 64-bit version of Mini vMac and extract it. It is one program, Mini vMac.exe.
  2. Open System 1.0 to 7.5.5 Apps on the Internet Archive. Download the system you want, for example System 6.0.8.zip or System 7.5.5.zip.
  3. Extract the zip file. On Windows, the .app is a folder: open it, then Contents, then mnvm_dat.
  4. Copy the two files you find there, disk1.dsk (the system disk) and vMac.ROM (the ROM), into the folder of Mini vMac.exe.
  5. Start Mini vMac.exe. The Mac starts on the system you chose.
  6. To play a game, drop its disk image on the Mini vMac window.

System 6.0.8, then System 7.5.5: download from the Internet Archive, copy disk1.dsk and vMac.ROM next to Mini vMac, and start it.

To try another system, copy the two files of its zip file instead. All of them emulate a Mac Plus, except System 7.5.5 Color: it needs the Macintosh II variation of Mini vMac, because the Mac Plus version cannot show color.

Alternative: a ready-made setup on GitHub

The mini-vmac-setup repository, by nyteshade, holds Mini vMac, ROM files and a Mac OS 7.5.5 system disk. On its page, click Code, then Download ZIP.

Basilisk II: a ready-to-use package on Windows

A package on the Internet Archive holds Basilisk II, a ROM file and Mac OS 7.5.3, already installed. Download it, fix the paths in one file, and start it.

  1. Open Mac OS 7.5 Basilisk II Emulation w/ Mario Teaches Typing CD-ROM on the Internet Archive. Download the ZIP file (about 580 MB) and extract it.
  2. Open BasiliskII_prefs in a text editor, such as Notepad. The disk and rom lines start with a path from the PC of the person who made the package: C:\Users\Cayby\1-17-15\Basilisk II. On each line, replace this part with a dot. For example, disk .\Mac OS 7.5. Save the file.
  3. Start BasiliskII.exe. Mac OS 7.5.3 starts. The package also holds the CD of the game Mario Teaches Typing, which shows on the Mac desktop.

The paths fixed in BasiliskII_prefs, then Mac OS 7.5.3 starts and Mario Teaches Typing runs from its CD.

Once it runs, you can add more disk images to the Mac. You can find Mac OS 8 disk images on the Internet Archive. To add one, put a disk line for it in BasiliskII_prefs, like the lines you just changed.

SheepShaver: a ready-to-use package on Windows

For Mac OS 8.6, a package on Macintosh Repository holds a Mac OS 8.6 disk, already installed, and the ROM file. You only tell SheepShaver where they are.

  1. Open SheepShaver ready to go package with MacOS 8.6 (Linux/Windows) on Macintosh Repository. Download the Windows version (a .7z file, about 90 MB). The author says the Linux version does not work well.
  2. Extract the file. Windows 11 opens .7z files: right-click, then Extract all. You get a README.txt, a disk image called HDD (500 MB), the ROM file Mac OS ROM, and a SheepShaver folder.
  3. Use the SheepShaver of the package, or a newer build from the E-Maculation forums. If you use a newer build, copy HDD and Mac OS ROM into its folder.
  4. Start SheepShaverGUI.exe. The settings window opens.
  5. On the Volumes tab, click Add and choose HDD.
  6. On the Memory/Misc tab, click Browse next to ROM File and choose Mac OS ROM.
  7. On the Graphics/Sound tab, set Window Refresh Rate to 30 Hz or 60 Hz. The low default makes the screen slow. Set a larger Width and Height if you want a bigger window.
  8. Click Start. Mac OS 8.6 starts, with the Macintosh HD disk on the desktop.

The disk and the ROM chosen in the SheepShaver settings, a faster refresh rate, then Mac OS 8.6 starts.

Complete guides for Mac emulation

Except for Infinite Mac, you need a Mac ROM file and a copy of the Mac system to install. Then follow the E-Maculation guide for your emulator.

The ROM files are quite annoying to get. For Mini vMac, Basilisk II and SheepShaver, the packages above include one. You can also extract one from a working Mac, or get several with this guide at Redundant Robot. QEMU is the exception: it needs no ROM file.

Then follow these guides:

  • SheepShaver: setup guide on Windows, Mac, or Linux.
  • Basilisk II: setup guide on Windows, Mac, or Linux.
  • Mini vMac: setup guide on Windows.
  • QEMU: setup guide on Mac. On Mac and Linux, QemuMac is a set of scripts that builds PowerPC G4 Macs for Mac OS 9.2.2, Mac OS X 10.4, and Mac OS X 10.5.6. It does not cover Windows.

Getting the game into the emulated Mac

Mac games often come as disk images or compressed archives that only a Mac can open. Put the file in the shared folder of your emulator, then open it inside the emulated Mac.

SheepShaver and Basilisk II show a shared folder of your computer as a disk on the Mac desktop, called Unix on Mac and Linux, and My Computer on Windows. The setup guides above explain how to choose the folder. Mini vMac opens a disk image when you drop it on its window.

In our archives, you'll come across these formats:

  • .dsk, .img, .image: disk images. Most emulators mount them directly, like a floppy or a hard disk.
  • .toast, .iso, .cdr: CD images. Mount them as a CD in the emulator.
  • .sit, .hqx, .bin, .sea: Mac archives (StuffIt, BinHex, MacBinary). Open them inside the emulated Mac with StuffIt Expander, which you can find on Macintosh Garden. Don't extract them on your computer: it would lose the part of the file only a Mac understands, and the game would not start.

I need help!

Mac emulation is more complicated than DOS emulation, but the E-Maculation community is very helpful, with tons of guides and tutorials.

We do not provide support for running abandonware games: ask your questions on the E-Maculation forums. You should also read the guides of Macintosh Garden, which cover many common problems.

First written by hand, and brought up to date in October 2026 against each program's own documentation and, where it exists, its source code. Game counts and file sizes come from our own catalogue. The update was drafted with the help of an AI assistant and checked by hand before publishing. If something here is out of date, tell us.