Play StarCraft and Diablo II on your Mac
No one really knows how long until the futuristic real-time strategy game StarCraft II is released, but you can bet it won’t be any time soon. Developer Blizzard Entertainment is notorious for taking its time intricately crafting epic story arcs and balancing multiplayer modes, which would explain how the company has produced some of the most popular computer games ever released.
So while we wait impatiently, why not brush up on the basics by playing the original StarCraft in the mean time?
Unfortunately there’s a big obstacle: the game was initially released for Mac OS 9. While this isn’t a big deal for older PowerPC-based Macs that can run archaic software using the Classic emulator, the newer Intel systems are left out in the cold. So how can we relive the glory days of low-resolution, last century gaming?
Luckily Blizzard has got us covered. Buried away on the developer’s support site is a link to the Mac OS X Native Installer. Using this application and your dusty, old StarCraft disc, you can get a Carbon version of the game running on any Mac. Intel systems will use Rosetta emulation, but you won’t notice much slowdown since the game isn’t very processor intensive. This trick, however, won’t work for the StarEdit campaign editor, so budding creators should turn to the more advanced editor found in WarCraft III — or you could just wait out StarCraft II’s release.
StarCraft lets you choose from three armies, each with unique fighting abilities. The Terran is the basic human group, complete with traditional marines, tanks, aircrafts and nuclear missiles. The Protoss is a powerful race whose buildings and many of its units require battery power to operate at full capacity. Finally the Zergs spit green acid and normally travel in massive groups due to their ability to produce units quickly.
I was pleasantly surprised to find I could still jump on Battle.net almost 10 years since I first played and find people to compete against online. Granted the majority of them only spoke Korean and devoured my Terran army in a few minutes, but it’s still a fun way to relive years past.
Blizzard also offers an OS X installer for Diablo II. If you have trouble running it on an Intel Mac even after using the native installer, hold the Option key when launching the app, and set the video options to “software.” Now you should be good to go to Hell and battle Satan. Just make sure to watch out for high-level bullies who try to smack down newbies.
Recent releases of StarCraft and Diablo II include the native installers on the disc, so if you bought your copy recently, hopefully you can look forward to going online and seeing new players, who dug their old copies out of the closet.
Blizzard is an awesome dev! More game developers should take a page from the way they continue to support their products years after they’ve been released.
Wow I didn’t know this. Now if I could only find my game discs from 1996 I would be set :/
This is awesome. I knew about the OS X installs but I didn’t know I could get the games running on an intel mac.
Unfortunately I’m not able to download the patches or the native installers from blizzard because of a 403 error. Any ideas?
Great post!
Heh, yeah this is a fun little update. Having grown up with these games, let’s just say I don’t feel a bit ashamed to be happily wasting time again with both on my Macbook Pro.
Thanks!
@Timmy: yeah it’s an FTP site so there is limited spots… I think this post is likely getting that server hammered too.
Keep trying and you will eventually get in (I did). great info thanks guys!
@MikeH – Thanks dude, I’ve got Diablo, Still no luck with StarCraft, but at least I know what’s up now. I’ll keep trying.
I’m giddy as I was when I first installed these games long ago in a galaxy far, far away.
That’s sweet! Now, if only I could go back and play Warcraft II…yeah, I’m a nerd.
Awesome, thank you very much
I just recently got my mac book pro, and I installed Diablo II on it. I have a newer disk so it has the Mac OS X installer on it, yet every time I try to start it up it pops up saying it had to close unexpectedly. I tried the trick about holding the option button while I start it, but it still gives me the message. Anyone have any ideas?
Getting the same problem as Justin. real bummer – anyone with any solutions? Running Leopard on a MacBook.
Great post, great games, a killer combo.
Unfortunately, my new new macbook pro is getting the same problem as the above two. I was really looking forward to playing D II on my new computer as well.
I think it is because the newest mac’s cards no longer support 256 colors (only thousands and millions) so these older games who don’t support higher amounts of colors are crippled and fall on the floor dead.
Might there be a way to emulate the games to work on the new macs? I hope so.
As it turns out, there is also a forum post on Blizzard’s site about this problem. Some other people there have the same idea as Colin, in fact one of the posts has a link to a webpage where you can download the older driver that does support 256 colors, it seem that that is all that is needed for them to run. This does however mean that in order to play them you need to essentially down grade your mac, that or you can run it in windows through something like VMWare or Parallels. I unfortunately seem to have misplaced the link to the one on Blizzard’s site, but did find another one that has a link to the site to download the old drivers. http://www.battle.net/forums/thread.aspx?fn=support&t=552301&p=1&
http://70.181.80.166:82/blog/archives/2008/07/mac-os-10531054-nvidia-256-colors.html
Found the link in the Blizzard forums, thanks!
Now I will download it and see if it works. Hope my computer doesn’t implode…
Update: It works! Everything in Diablo II and starcraft seems to work fine with this download.
Yay!
I downloaded the application and my StarCraft works fine, although I can’t use the map editor, but I downloaded the app for Diablo II, and it won’t work, it installed properly, but the game title pops up as normal, as soon as I press anything, the screen freezes, but the music stills plays, has any had this problem? and can anyone help?
Diablo 2 i think a good game.maybe some day i will tray it.
I cant get my starcraft disc to stay in? any preferences etc I should change? During the installer run it says insert starcraft CD and I put it in my macbook and the discs bounces right back out about 10 sec in.
I got D2 installed but having trouble playing it. I get the same error message as above. I went to install the older driver and it said not to install if you have OS X 10.5.5. which I did at the time. I now have 10.5.6. Can anyone help me on how to get Diablo 2 to work?
As much as I hate to suggest it, every Blizzard game I have ever purchased comes with both the Mac and Windows version on the same disc. With Boot Camp and a copy of XP you can be up and running with few problems beyond those inherent to Windows.
It’s not ideal but it is an option until something better comes along. Here’s hoping that Blizzard releases some sort of universal installer for those with Intel chips who don’t want to muck around in the world of Redmond. From the amount of job postings on their site I wouldn’t hold my breath though. I guess there are some advantages to still running a PPC mac.
Now if only they would rerelease the original Diablo with better graphics and Universal gameplay . . . . .
when i installed diablo 2 on my computer it works fine until i get to the main menu screen and it doesnt really show up at all so i cant choose any settings…(I MAC computer)…
I did all of the suggested methods
-D2 game installer
-1.12 Patch
-Beta launcher that surpasses the carbon copy
I get to the screen where I can select volume and color quality, but then when I press “ok” the screen goes black and I have to restart my mac.
I’m running on a 10.5.6 Macbook.
Any suggestions?
i just install the diablo 2 in macbook but they need the cd key-
can you pls give to me plsss
So me like others has a 10.5.6 macbook and unfortunately i cannot run diablo on it…. any ideas?
all right, this is what you do.
*Download the diablo 2 installer on the blizzard support page
*install D2 with this installer (obviously…)
*download the patch, then RUN it and D2 will be updated
*after that, when you have the play disk in and you are on the screen where you configure video settings, change to 256 colors.
This is because the mac automatically assumes that you can run this old game on thousands/millions of colors. The problem is that diablo 2 is based on the 256 system. That’s worked for me like a charm! let me know if you need any more help.
oh yeah, and add the beta launcher.
here it is…
http://www.macgamefiles.com/detail.php?item=20233
that is between steps 3 and 4
hey guys, i managed to install diablo 2 no problem, but when i try to run it it closing unexpectedly. please help! im running on 10.5.5. thanks . max
Thanks for the holding the option key tip.
Going to try this out later when I have some spare time.
woher bekomm ich den cd cod ?
hi, i just downloaded the installer for starcraft. Everything downloaded/worked fine, but when i go to open/play it, it gives me a little box that says start-up options. I press ok and Starcraft just quits. What should i do?
hi, i just downloaded the installer for starcraft. Everything downloaded/worked fine, but when i go to open/play it, it gives me a little box that says start-up options. I press ok and Starcraft just quits. What should i do?
Please reply with something that i could do.
Thanks
k so…ive downloaded the native installer downloaded the patch and the beta patch and its all running good except for battelnet. says it cannot recognize my format or something to that nature. by the way im running it on a 10.5.6 mac os X. i can only run d2 as the beta format i think that the beta format isn’t recognized by battlenet which is why it won’t work, if anyone knows of any new patches that are recognized that would be awesome thanks
so i downloaded the native installer…. downloaded the patch…. ran the patch…. downloaded the beta launcher…. ran the beta launcher…. and after running the beta launcher it says that diablo has encountered a serious error and i should re install it…. and i also get the application quit unexpectedly message when i try to play the game… ive tried almost everything…i am running 10.5.6 osx and this has been buggin me for sometime… am i doing everything right????
is there any way to install the expansion with this stuff and play it?
it doesnt work for me. i also booted to os 9 and cant figure that out either. im so lost and alone
seth i need ur help were do u change the colors to when ur installing d2? cuz i did and i dont see anything when i put the play disc into to change it any hep guys its been bugging me for month i neeed help im on 10.5.7 and i get the unexpected error thing
Hey, I just downloaded the Native Installer and the Carbon patch for the game, and still I get an immediate message when I try to start up D2 that the program has encountered a problem and needs to close. It asks me whether I would like to try and relaunch, report or close, when I press relaunch, it immediately does it again. I have the newest version of OSX. I really wanna play this, so is there anything I can do to fix this? The Native download itself is definitely not fixing the problem. Keep in mind that I have no problem installing the game, it’s just launching it to play it.
This is to the last two posts…
as long as you’re on the lastest Mac settings, this will work. I’m assuming your problem is that after the startup screen, your screen goes black and then suddenly closes with the demonic error message.
when you have the play disk in and you are on the screen where you configure video settings (it should be staring you in the face), change from thousands of colors to 256 colors.
This is because the mac automatically assumes that you can run this old game on thousands/millions of colors. The problem is that diablo 2 is based on the 256 system. That’s worked for me like a charm! let me know if you need any more help.
Hey.
I tried every thing but it will not work. I have a MacBook OS X 10.5.7.
HELP!!!
I’ve downloaded the most recent Diablo 2 from Blizzard’s website, and it crashes every time I try to start it (OS X 10.5.7). I’m hoping that installing LoD will fix it, but we’ll see.
Blizzard needs to address this!!!
[...] the way I found this nice guide for installing StarCraft and Diablo II on Intel Macs. And I got to play a game I haven’t for a [...]
Another way to run Starcraft is putting Windows on your Mac. You can do this by using either one of these virtual machine programs: VMware, Boot Camp, which is already on Mac, or Parallel. I use VMware because it lets you use either a bootable disc or a disc image, and it lets you run windows and Mac OS X at the same time. So if you have the Windows installation cd use that through VMware, or get a disc image iso. file from Utorrent or something.
To Justin or any other person, I used the patch and had problems opening D2 using the installer also. What i ended up doing was getting another patch off the internet that was for the computer??? SOmething like that.
What the problem was said to be, was that the mac computers dont register/run 16bit or something. Hope this helped or let you know of any problem solving ideas.
EDIT: I was using a Macbook Pro OS X
Alright well I am running a PowerPC (G4) iBook with OS 10.5.7 and I’m getting that interesting problem others have gotten, where the cd spits itself back out as if it’s the wrong cd. Clearly it is NOT the wrong cd, so I don’t know what the problem is. I have had a couple copies of the cd in years past (kept losing the dang things) so the cd key might be from a different copy of the cd. But that has never been an issue on the computers I have used in the past. I’ve never installed sc on any Macs before, and the cd does state “Windows 95 & NT CD-ROM” on it, so I’m not sure what’s going on.
Help would be appreciated.
I found that if you get a login to Battle.net and register your copy of StarCraft or Diablo II you can download CD images for the game. ie. If you have the CD key you can download the latest version of the game (if you have the bandwidth).
I think diablo 2 can only be run on 256 colos but the new macs dont use 256 colors help me?!
Mother of a bastard!
I didnt’ know you could play diablo on a mac! @_@ talk about being updated.. google sniper review
I was able to successfully install and play LOD in single player, but am having trouble trying to play multiplayer. As mentioned earlier, there’s a Beta Carbon copy or whatever which doesn’t allow for Battle.net, but have there been any updates?
If there’s a way to play via tcp/ip , open battle. net, or closed, would anyone please explain how to do so please? thanks =)