Installing Diablo 2 on an Intel Mac

Back in the day (2000-2003) I played Diablo 2 — a lot.   A bit of nostalgia and the upcoming release of Diablo 3 meant it was time to give it another shot — but I couldn’t find my CDs anywhere. No problem, I went out and purchased the Diablo 2 Battle Chest which includes the original game plus the expansion pack — Lord of Destruction.

But would it work on my Intel-based Mac.  My backup plan was to install it on an old PC, but ideally I wanted it to work on my Mac.  There’s a few roadblocks to that plan though.  1) It was written for the old Mac OS, not “OS X” which is based on Unix.  It was also written to run on a different processor, not the Intel I have in my Mac. It was a bit of a hassle to get it working, and tech notes on how to do so were lacking, but in the end it works. You just can’t expect to pull out the CDs from the box and get it working though.

This blog entry is meant to document first how to do it, then the pitfalls I hit along the way.

Quick Install Steps

1. Download and run the OS X Installer instead of the one on the CD. Find it here (hopefully):
   http://us.blizzard.com/support/article.xml?locale=en_US&articleId=20758
2. Run the Installer downloaded above. Be sure to click the full install for Diablo 2, Lord of Destruction. Do not even think it makes sense to first install Diablo 2, then the expansion. This installer will prompt you to install both versions and all CDs
3. Download the patch for the expansion from the above link. Do not download the patch for the original, just the expansion.
4. Install the patch
5. Manually copy the file “Diablo II Expansion Music” from the Expansion CD into your Diablo 2 folder. This is optional but by doing so you won’t need to have the CD in the drive to run the game.

Lessons Learned

I made a few mistakes, hit a few road blocks, learned a few things.

• Installer won’t run from CD. Says classic environment no longer supported. The native OS X installer fixed that.
• I installed Diablo 2 first using the native installer, then when it was done, I went to install the expansion and got the error: “Diablo II is already installed at this location. Please try installing to a different location” — the fix is to delete the Diablo II folder and start over — this time just install the full install of the expansion pack to start with, and it will prompt you to shovel in the CDs for the original as well.
• OK to use OpenGL for video, at least on my Mac. I read some places to use the software rendering or it’d crash. I haven’t encountered that.
• Hit CMD-M to make it run in a window. Hit CMD-M to bring it back to full screen
• It’s a CPU hog, even on my 3.06 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo iMac.  Remember, it’s running in emulation mode. It’s not a native Intel app.
• When you run it, a small window pops up with video options. There’s a small arrow at bottom right to flip to additional screens. Don’t miss it!
• Remember when 800×600 was hi res?

Tagged as: Apple gaming