Amaya Toman Collecting old game consoles and vintage computers is a fun hobby, but keeping all the hardware running can quickly become an expensive and exhausting task – not to mention the space you need just to store the equipment. Instead, you can (sensibly) choose to emulate your favorite games and software on a Mac you already own.
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In today's article, we'll take a quick look at the best apps you can use for the most common scenarios: playing old video games and experiencing classic Mac OS on a modern Mac, and emulating other operating systems. All methods are open-source and completely free.
OpenEmu
If you love old console games, you can try an emulator called OpenEmu. OpenEmu is a great way to play old video games on Mac. On first launch, the app will ask which consoles you want to enable. There are dozens of options available in terms of time period and console brand. With OpenEmu, you can download ROMs online, copy ROMs from game cartridges you already own, and simply drag and drop them into the app to add them to your library. After that, just double-click on the game and start it. You can adapt the controls to your Mac keyboard or use the connected controller. And you can easily create save states to pick up where you left off. Games are automatically categorized by console; you can also create your own collections.
You can download OpenEmu for free here.
Old Macs in a web browser
Not all emulators are necessarily downloadable – Infinite Mac, for example, works online in your web browser interface. Infinite Mac is a simple way to work with earlier versions of the Mac OS, as there is no need to install anything. Thanks to the magic of WebAssembly, these virtual machines run directly in any modern web browser. You can set up various combinations of system software Apple with a classic Mac of your choice. In addition, all installations include some of the most popular applications and games since Mac OS was released: MacWrite and MacPaint, Photoshop, Microsoft Word, KPT Bryce, Marathon, Another World, SimCity, Lemmings, Civilization and more. You can also add your own software by simply dragging and dropping. Infinite Mac will treat it as if you were inserting a floppy disk. You save your work by placing the files in the Outside World folder, which are instantly downloaded to your Mac.
You can find the Infinite Mac website here.
Virtualization of operating systems
UTM represents the easiest way to emulate or virtualize modern operating systems on the Mac. Setting it up is night and day easier than setting up VirtualBox, which has cost me many frustrating hours of life that I will never get back. Using UTM is as simple as clicking a few buttons. After downloading the free software, just press the + button and click on the option to download pre-made files from the gallery. You can download any of the preset machines and run it right away. Maybe you want to play a classic PC game like Quake III, Rollercoaster Tycoon or SimTower in the Windows XP operating system interface. Or you may have an installation of Mac OS 9 running locally on your computer. UTM is more reliable than Infinite Mac, which runs in a web browser. UTM can also virtualize modern operating systems like Windows 11 for the few programs you might need to run on a PC. If you use your Mac for software development, you can also run a variety of Linux distributions on it - Ubuntu, Fedora, Debian, and more.
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