Apr 01, 2020  You can play games with just your iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Mac, or Apple TV. If you see a controller icon on the app's page, the game has controller support for that device. You can use a game controller to play most games, even if they don't require it. Some games on Apple TV require a controller to play. Gamesgames.com has a huge collection of fun games. Totally new ones are added every day, and there’s over 20,000 free online games for you to play. At GamesGames, you can try out everything from kids games to massive multiplayer online games that will challenge even the best of players.

The Mac has plenty of games, but it'll always get the short end of the stick compared to Windows. If you want to play the latest games on your Mac, you have no choice but to install Windows ... or do you?

There are a few ways you can play Windows games on your Mac without having to dedicate a partition to Boot Camp or giving away vast amounts of hard drive space to a virtual machine app like VMWare Fusion or Parallels Desktop. Here are a few other options for playing Windows games on your Mac without the hassle or expense of having to install Windows.

GeForce Now

PC gaming on Mac? Yes you can, thanks to Nvidia's GeForce Now. The service allows users to play PC games from Steam or Battle.net on macOS devices. Better still, the graphic power of these games resides on Nvidia's servers. The biggest drawback: the service remains in beta, and there's been no announcement when the first full release is coming or what a monthly subscription will cost.

For now, at least, the service is free to try and enjoy. All supported GeForce NOW titles work on Macs, and yes, there are plenty of them already available!

The Wine Project

The Mac isn't the only computer whose users have wanted to run software designed for Windows. More than 20 years ago, a project was started to enable Windows software to work on POSIX-compliant operating systems like Linux. It's called The Wine Project, and the effort continues to this day. OS X is POSIX-compliant, too (it's Unix underneath all of Apple's gleam, after all), so Wine will run on the Mac also.

Wine is a recursive acronym that stands for Wine Is Not an Emulator. It's been around the Unix world for a very long time, and because OS X is a Unix-based operating system, it works on the Mac too.

As the name suggests, Wine isn't an emulator. The easiest way to think about it is as a compatibility layer that translates Windows Application Programming Interface (API) calls into something that the Mac can understand. So when a game says 'draw a square on the screen,' the Mac does what it's told.

You can use straight-up Wine if you're technically minded. It isn't for the faint of heart, although there are instructions online, and some kind souls have set up tutorials, which you can find using Google. Wine doesn't work with all games, so your best bet is for you to start searching for which games you'd like to play and whether anyone has instructions to get it working on the Mac using Wine.

Note: At the time of this writing, The Wine Project does not support macOS 10.15 Catalina.

CrossOver Mac

CodeWeavers took some of the sting out of Wine by making a Wine-derived app called CrossOver Mac. CrossOver Mac is Wine with specialized Mac support. Like Wine, it's a Windows compatibility layer for the Mac that enables some games to run.

CodeWeavers has modified the source code to Wine, made some improvements to configuration to make it easier, and provided support for their product, so you shouldn't be out in the cold if you have trouble getting things to run.

My experience with CrossOver — like Wine — is somewhat hit or miss. Its list of actual supported games is pretty small. Many other unsupported games do, in fact work — the CrossOver community has many notes about what to do or how to get them to work, which are referenced by the installation program. Still, if you're more comfortable with an app that's supported by a company, CrossOver may be worth a try. What's more, a free trial is available for download, so you won't be on the hook to pay anything to give it a shot.

Boxer

If you're an old-school gamer and have a hankering to play DOS-based PC games on your Mac, you may have good luck with Boxer. Boxer is a straight-up emulator designed especially for the Mac, which makes it possible to run DOS games without having to do any configuring, installing extra software, or messing around in the Mac Terminal app.

With Boxer, you can drag and drop CD-ROMs (or disk images) from the DOS games you'd like to play. It also wraps them into self-contained 'game boxes' to make them easy to play in the future and gives you a clean interface to find the games you have installed.

Boxer is built using DOSBox, a DOS emulation project that gets a lot of use over at GOG.com, a commercial game download service that houses hundreds of older PC games that work with the Mac. So if you've ever downloaded a GOG.com game that works using DOSBox, you'll have a basic idea of what to expect.

Some final thoughts

In the end, programs like the ones listed above aren't the most reliable way to play Windows games on your Mac, but they do give you an option.

Of course, another option is to run Windows on your Mac, via BootCamp or a virtual machine, which takes a little know-how and a lot of memory space on your Mac's hard drive.

How do you play your Windows games on Mac?

Let us know in the comment below!

Updated October 2019: Updated with the best options.

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C.J.'s next Fishing Tourney will be in July

There are four Fishing Tourneys each year in Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Here's when they are and what the rules are for participating.

Playing games with friends is always better, and your Apple TV has plenty of multiplayer games that are a blast to play with friends and family. Here are my top picks for the best multiplayer games for your Apple TV.

Drawful 2

Draw your best representation of a specific phrase and try to get your friends to figure out what it is. It's not entirely unlike Pictionary, but even harder because you only have one chance to draw your masterpiece.

Your friends can vote on which phrase they think matches your drawing and if they're right, you'll earn big points. If you come up with a funny phrase for your friends' drawings, you might get a few bonus points, too. It's a hilarious game for all ages.

Just Dance Now

Grab your dancing shoes and get ready for a night in your living room, Just Dance Now will turn games night into a riot. Get your friends and family to download the iOS app, and then start dancing!

You'll need to mimic the dance moves of the characters on the screen with your phone in hand, the more accurate you are, the more points you get. Challenge your friends to an epic dance-off and see who can do Gangnam Style as well as PSY.

SongPop Party

Are you as good as Shazam? Test your music knowledge against your friends with SongPop Party.

Using your iOS device as a controller, you and your friends will need to listen to small clips of popular tunes and guess the song or artist!

You can play SongPop Party with up to six players at once, perfect for hosting games night.

Games For Mac

SketchParty TV

Calling all Pictionary enthusiasts, SketchParty TV brings all the fun of the classic drawing game to the big screen.

Divide your groups into teams, and start drawing the clues as best as you can. You can use different colors of ink and even different brush sizes to give your team the best chance of guessing correctly.

Fibbage XL

A hilarious game that has some similarities with Balderdash, Fibbage XL is a personal favorite of mine.

By using your iOS devices, players will have to create lies that seem believable enough to be the truth that fit into the clue. Players pick which answer they think is the truth — which the game provides among all your friends lies. If a player guesses your lie, you get points!

In my group of friends, Fibbage XL usually turns pretty NSFW, but it's an amazingly fun time seeing what lies everyone comes up with.

Party Pong

Longing for those Friday night college parties you and your friends use to throw? Relive some of the magic with Party Pong.

Play Free Mac Games Online

While it may not be quite as fun as the real thing, Party Pong is still a great way to challenge your friends to a game that takes skill. Throw the ball into all the party cups before your opponent does the same to you to win the game. Who will be crowned the Party Pong king or queen of your friends?

What are your favorites!

What do you play with your friends on Apple TV? Let me know in the comment below, or hit me up on Twitter.

Updated December 2018: Added Drawful 2.

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Eve updates app to add new customization and better iCloud syncing

Mac Games Free

Eve has updated its Eve for HomeKit app, and version 4.2 has a host of new features!