In the general case, you normally can't expect to go to your favorite game shop, pick up a PC game, take it home, and expect to be able to put the game on your Mac and have it run. However, it is possible to play PC games on a Mac. when attempting to play a Windows game on a Mac OS-based machine, you have several options, each with its drawbacks and strengths. **Please note**: This is intended as general advice to a non-technical audience. This is not indented to be a "catch-all" how do I overcome game X's difficulties when running under solution Y. It is further not meant to be a full and complete overview of WINE/Virtual Machines/dual booting/etc. The intent is to generally summarize the solutions to allow people to choose a direction to invest further effort. Get the Mac Port = If it exists, getting the Mac port or playing it natively on your Mac is almost always the best way to play any game on a Mac. With the advent of things like [SteamPlay][1] and the rise of independent game houses, more and more games are coming out for the Mac. Don't assume that the game is Windows-only until you've done the research. More and more games are now showing up in browsers, which can also sometimes make them platform independent. Whenever you can, buy/use the Mac edition of the game in question to get the best experience. **Pros** - Support Mac publishers and encourage more Mac games. - Usually the best possible experience, designed for your OS. - Better support for 3D acceleration and other advanced hardware features. **Cons** - Not all games have a Mac port. - Sometimes can be expensive to re-purchase a game if you already own it. - Some features may be platform-specific. Virtual Machine = With desktop [virtual machine][2] software, you can run a copy of Windows as a "program" under Mac OS. Several software packages exist, such as [VirtualBox][3], [Parallels][4], and [VMWare Fusion][5]. Once you've installed the virtual machine software, you can follow a simple wizard to create a file on your hard drive to hold your Windows installation and applications, and then the system will walk you through setting up Windows from the install media. **Pros** - Setup is generally fairly easy - if you can install OSX programs and Windows programs, you can probably install a Windows virtual machine with little trouble. - Integration with your existing OSX applications tends to be fairly seamless. - Run a wide array of Windows apps without having to do any sort of complicated setup per-app. **Cons** - VM software is a resource hog, and will eat large chunks of your RAM, CPU, and disk space. - The guest operating system (in this case, Windows) won't have full access to your hardware, so performance is going to be poorer than some of the other solutions on this list. - 3D support and performance are generally fairly poor, although this area is evolving. - Cost - you need to own a license to Windows, and in most cases you will also have to purchase a license to the virtual machine software. Dual Boot = With Apple's [BootCamp][6] software, you can install Windows into a separate part of your Mac's hard drive, and then you can choose to start either Windows or Mac OS on your Mac when you start it up. Apple provides technical manuals for properly installing BootCamp on your Mac, which are easy to follow and thorough. **Pros** - Windows is actually running on your hardware, so installing/playing Windows games is generally a breeze. Install them on your Mac just like you would on any other Windows PC. - Windows has full control of your hardware, so 3D support and game performance are as good as comparable non-Mac hardware. **Cons** - Rebooting to switch between Mac OS and Windows is painful and time consuming. - Requires that you have a valid, licensed copy of Windows, which can be expensive. Emulation = Virtual machines emulate an entire PC, but oftentimes this solution is overkill. Emulators (and similar programs) only fake part of the device or OS in question, which can yield better performance with less overhead. [Darwine][7] and [CrossoverGames][8] are based on the WINE project which attempts to reproduce Windows API calls on Linux/Mac. [DOSBox][9] emulates a DOS environment for older games. Additionally, console games can be played on Macs with the appropriate console emulator. **Pros** - Many emulators are free, and do not require a Windows license/install disc. - Emulators generally require fewer resources than a virtual machine. **Cons** - Emulation can produce unstable results. - Not all games are compatible with emulation. - Emulators generally have poor support compared to other solutions - expect to experiment and invest time to get your game running properly. [1]: https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=9439-QHKN-1308 [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_machine [3]: https://www.virtualbox.org/ [4]: http://www.parallels.com/products/desktop/ [5]: http://www.vmware.com/products/fusion/overview.html [6]: http://www.apple.com/support/bootcamp/ [7]: http://darwine.sourceforge.net/ [8]: http://www.codeweavers.com/products/cxgames/ [9]: http://www.dosbox.com/