How to make the PC version of the Sims 2 work on my Mac OSX?

December 5, 2007 4:20 PM

Is there any way to make the PC version of The Sims 2 that I mistakenly downloaded work on my Mac OS X? Please?

Immediately after paying for the download, I realized that I had selected the PC version, so the EA Games installer wasn't even recognized by my computer. Trying to communicate with EA's customer service is insanely frustrating. Clearly, I'm not a computer genius, but if anyone has any ideas for tricking my computer into allowing the game, I'm willing to try. I friggin' love the sims.

posted by pieliza to Technology (13 answers total)

If you have an Intel Mac, you could run it on your XP partition. I've never done this, but I believe the software you need to create this partition is called Boot Camp, and of course you need a retail version of XP.
posted by Brocktoon at 4:32 PM on December 5, 2007

An important question is what kind of Mac you have. The CPU architecture is going to have a significant impact on any "hack my existing app to work on my machine strategy" (as opposed to a "please exchange this game for one that was written for my machine" strategy...)
posted by ZakDaddy at 4:32 PM on December 5, 2007

...and if you have an Intel Mac, Brocktoon's got it.

Information about Boot Camp is here. Note that the Tiger (OS X 10.4 version) "beta" version has expired, and to run Boot Camp you now need to purchase Leopard, as well as the above-mentioned copy of Windows.
posted by ZakDaddy at 4:38 PM on December 5, 2007

Just to clarify something: It cannot run directly under OSX.
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 4:56 PM on December 5, 2007

VMWare Fusion is your friend. It will let you run the program in its own window without rebooting. The only caveat is that you need a fair bit of memory as it runs a full Windows XP underneath your program.
posted by MasterShake at 5:39 PM on December 5, 2007

Unless you already own a copy of Windows XP, there is no legal way to do this without buying a copy of Windows XP. It would be considerably cheaper to just buy the Mac version of the program.
posted by mr_roboto at 6:04 PM on December 5, 2007

Whoops. Drop the XP. Vista would work, too, and is a lot easier to get retail.
posted by mr_roboto at 6:05 PM on December 5, 2007

XP is better for most folks, though. Vista's suckage is legendary. Particularly for gaming, XP is a better choice.
posted by Malor at 6:08 PM on December 5, 2007

I'd continue to walk up the ramp of CSR hell until someone was willing to be nice and win me as a customer for life.

Then again, it's EA.
posted by secret about box at 7:15 PM on December 5, 2007

When you purchased the download, was there any sort of return policy listed? If there is, and EA is being difficult, you might have an avenue with your credit card company.

Incidentally, the OS X native version of the Sims 2 works fine, but dealing with Aspyr is just about as bad as EA
posted by nathan_teske at 8:04 PM on December 5, 2007

Just curious, does VMWare or Parallels support 3D graphics acelleration? Because The Sims2 is very very touchy when it comes to 3D graphics support, and isn't all that nice of a player with OSX as a system, wanting to take over the entire screen.

The cheapest route is to just bite the bullet and buy it from Aspyr. But, a common mistake that I feel the need to warn people about is that The Sims 2 won't run on any Macintosh with the Intel GMA 950 graphics chip, including all Intel Minis, all MacBooks, and a handful of Intel iMacs. If you have any doubt, run the system profiler to see that you have an NVidia or ATI graphics processor.

It's possible maybe to run the Windows version using Boot Camp on some systems with the Intel GMA950 graphics card. But I don't have a confirmation that it works.

Or in summary, just buy it from Aspyr and keep pushing EA Games for a refund if you have a Mac that will run it. If you don't have a Mac that will run it, don't bother.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 6:34 AM on December 6, 2007

thanks everyone for lending me your tech savvy! i feel better already, now let's boycott EA. yay!
posted by pieliza at 4:43 PM on December 6, 2007

Cider? I've never used it (largely because I don't own a Mac), but's it's designed to do exactly what you're asking for. It's like Wine or Cedega for the Mac.
posted by mysterious1der at 7:13 PM on December 7, 2007