Alright so here’s what went down when I tried getting Diablo 2 running on my old MacBook – the one that’s stuck on High Sierra because Apple decided newer stuff ain’t worth it. Seriously, what the heck.
The Problem Is Crystal Clear
My ancient MacBook Air can’t run modern macOS anymore. Catalina? Forget it. All the fancy new guides talk about stuff that needs Mojave or higher, which is useless for me. I need Diablo 2, classic style, on ancient metal.
First, I figured using Wine or something similar might work. Everyone online says “Porting Kit” is the magic bullet. So I installed it, grabbed their Diablo 2 wrapper, hit install… and waited. And waited. It failed every single time. Corrupted download, missing dependencies, general garbage. Tried this three times with different versions. Nothing. Crashed faster than a Hardcore character in Hardcore mode.
Old School Route Failure
Fine, maybe I should install Mac OS 9 in a virtual machine. Sounds smart, right? Downloaded SheepShaver, found an old OS 9 disk image, set everything up… and wow, this thing runs like frozen molasses. Like, ten seconds for the mouse cursor to move. Unplayable. Deleted that disaster immediately.
At this point, I almost smashed my keyboard. But then I remembered seeing something about Playstation emulation. Diablo 1 got a PS1 port… maybe Diablo 2 did too? Turns out, nope. Never happened. But the PS1 emulator idea stuck in my stupid head.
The Breakthrough (And It’s Stupidly Simple)
I’d completely forgotten about OpenEmu. Installed that bad boy – super easy, runs fine on High Sierra. Then I realized: Diablo 2 isn’t on Playstation, BUT Diablo 1 is! While not my original target, a lightbulb went off – I could play the PS1 version of Diablo 1 while figuring out D2 later. Plus, it’s basically the same vibe. Found the PS1 ROM file (easy to find, don’t ask me where), dragged it into OpenEmu, and boom. Running perfect. Smooth. Controller support worked great with my cheap USB pad. Played through Tristram like it was 1998.
But D2? Still bugging me. My gut said try Wine again, but differently. Crawled through some ancient MacRumors forum posts. One thread mentioned “Mac OS X PowerPC” compatibility mode tricks using Rosetta Stone settings. Yeah, my Mac ain’t PowerPC, but the concept seemed relevant.
The Actual Solution
Turns out I was an idiot. The key wasn’t Wine wrappers or virtual machines. It was an old, unsupported, half-forgotten piece of software called “Porting Kit“… but NOT using their automatic wrappers. Someone buried in a forum comment suggested manually creating a fresh Wine bottle inside Porting Kit and pointing it directly at the original Diablo 2 Installer CD files.
I dug out my dusty old Diablo 2 Battle Chest box from the closet. Popped the LoD CD into my crappy USB DVD drive. Opened Porting Kit, didn’t touch their game library. Instead:
- Clicked “Install New App” → “Custom Install“
- Named it “Diablo 2 Old Mac Last Chance“
- Pointed Wine at the file on the Diablo 2 CD
- Went through the normal D2 install inside the Wine window
- After install, created a shortcut to “Diablo *“
- Ran it. Spun up… error about needing LoD disc.
Panicked slightly. Mounted the LoD CD iso file I made earlier. Went into Porting Kit’s settings for that bottle, told it to use the virtual drive letter for the LoD CD as the default CD source. Hit “Run” again.
It freaking worked. The cinematic played. The menu came up. My level 80 Hammerdin from 2006 sat there judging me. Perfect performance, zero graphical glitches on High Sierra. Nearly cried.
The Verdict
So yeah. Forget automatic wrappers. Forget emulating classic Mac OS. Forget Wine standalone. For really old macOS versions like High Sierra or Sierra, the answer is:
- Use Porting Kit‘s Custom Install feature.
- Install it manually from your original Diablo 2 CDs within that Wine bottle.
- Make sure the Wine bottle points to your mounted LoD CD for playback.
It’s janky. It shouldn’t work. But it does. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got Baal runs to do on a MacBook that technically belongs in a museum. Feels good.