Running Petz on a Mac: A Wineskin Tutorial

There is a much more current tutorial on Titanium. As a result, this tutorial is unlikely to work! I am leaving it up for posterity's sake. Please note that I am not responsible for any damage that may occur as a result of downloading and installing these programs. All programs work fine on my computer, but I can't say the same for yours. Based off of my tumblr post here.

So, you want to play Petz, but you own a Mac, right? And you can't justify shelling out 80 bucks for Parallels in order to play one little game. But that's okay, because fortunately (especially for poor college kids like me) there's a nifty little program called Wine that will trick your computer into thinking it's running a copy of Windows, thereby allowing you to play Petz, as well as some other (mostly older) games!

The first thing you'll want to do is download Wineskin here. Install it like any other app and run it. Click the plus icon in the lower left hand corner, under "Installed Engines" to install the latest engine and update your wrapper.

Next, click "New Blank Wrapper," and name it when it prompts you to do so. You should probably name it after the name of the program you want to install; for example, mine is called "Petz 4." Once it's named, wait for Winery to create it (which could take a while, depending on your computer). If you get a popup that says something about not being able to find a Mono package, ignore it. It's not necessary for Petz. Once the wrapper has been created, click "View Wrapper in Finder."

Drag the wrapper somewhere you can locate it easily. I like to drag mine onto the desktop.

If you don't have a copy of Petz on hand, you can download the Petz 4 demo here. After it's downloaded, drag the installation .exe over the wrapper you've made. You may get a message about needing to install something called "Gecko." Do it, or else you can't proceed with the installation. If you do have a copy of Petz on hand, insert the disc, find the .exe in Finder and drag it onto your wrapper. This should allow you to go through with the installation.

A window called CNET Download is going to pop up. Click the next button until it shows the progress of your installation. (You'll have to click it a few times, especially at "4 of 5," for some reason.)

You may get a message about a serious error that's occurred, but the installation should proceed anyway. After it's downloaded (which, again, can take a while), click on the install button and it should walk you through the steps of installing the demo.

Now you have a working demo of Petz 4! But you probably want the entire game, right? In that case, go download PetzA. You'll have to go through the same steps you did to install the demo (creating a new wrapper, etc.) but now that you know what you're doing, it should go much faster. PetzA is probably going to tell you it can't find your version of Petz, so you're going to have to find where the .exe has been installed manually. For mine, I had to go to Desktop:\Petz 4.app\drive_c\Petz 4.exe. Then, install PetzA as normal.

Now, click on your Petz 4 app. A window with several different options should show up. Click on "Advanced."

You have to tell your app where the .exe file is so it can load it every time, so you're going to have to go hunting for it again.

Once you've done this, you can do a test run to make sure it works. There's not a "Done" button that I can find, so I usually just hit enter after locating the .exe, and then exit the app.

You've done it! Click the app again to load Petz, then sit back and relish your skills as a computer wizard.

Some Notes & Bugs

First of all, if you're having problems getting Petz to run after you've gone through the installation process (for example, you get a notification saying Petz 4.exe has encountered a serious error), try downloading an app called XQuartz. I'm not entirely sure what causes the issue, but installing XQuartz seems to fix it.

Sometimes locating your breedz/adopted petz/toyz/what have you can be a pain. Once you've found where Petz is located (I have to go through my hard drive, to applications, and right click on the icon and click "show package contents," and from there Drive_C, Program Files, UbiSoft, etc.) I recommend making a shortcut on your desktop or elsewhere. It will save you a lot of trouble in the long run.

The gameplay itself is pretty much the same as on Windows. I have noticed that when you go to call out a pet, or choose a breed from the adoption center, you can't click on the pet. Just highlight the pet's name/breed and hit your return (enter) key, instead.

I've noticed that occasionally, there seem to be little bugs with the playscenes after quitting and then reloading the game. In the snow scene, the coal has a tendency to fall off the snowman after reloading the game. I've also had some flowers in the backyard disappear. Personally I think this has to do with how you exit the game (quitting the app from your dock instead of exiting out). If you exit out of the window and then wait a minute or two before quitting from the dock, things should vanish less often.

My friend Badger pointed out to me that if you hit the command key on the right side of your keyboard, the game crashes and gives you that wonderful "Verbasset.dll: Unhandled Exception" error and the game crashes. Hitting the command key on the left side does nothing, though.

go back!