Keep It Footloose and Disc-Free

If you have a steady online connection, you can install these games without ever needing the original discs (as long as you recorded the game’s serial number somewhere, or you can dig up the original packaging). Blizzard has recently added a way to register ownership of its physical games, letting you download digital copies of those titles. Once you identify your old copy of Diablo II, for example, you can retrieve the latest version without any of these updating steps, clocking in at about 1.5GB.

Visit www.blizzard.com/us/registration.html to begin the process. Click to sign up for your account, and follow the registration instructions. After finishing, click the link to verify your email address, and click the link inside the incoming message to complete the setup.

Click the Games button on the Blizzard account page, select Add New Game, and enter the serial number. When you're finished, click the Apple icon in the download graphic to copy a small application to your Mac. Unzip that file, and run it; this program will manage downloading and installing the complete, multi-gigabyte transfer.

If you have your serial numbers but not your discs, you can re-download the games for free here. (Click to embiggen!)

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Run Other Games Without a Disc

Other game companies usually require you to have a disc installed before playing a recent title. The need ranges from annoying on a desktop computer, to a nuisance when traveling with a laptop, to an impossibility on a MacBook Air. While one developer has told us about tentative plans to phase out these disc checks, you still might be able to play those games disc-free right now.

Insert your game disc, and open Disk Utility in the Applications > Utilities folder. Click the disc icon in the list on the left, and click the New Image button. Change the first pop-up menu to DVD/CD Master, and click Save. When finished, eject the disc, and open the image file you just created before beginning the game.

This process admittedly works best on older games; we couldn’t get most of our favorite new games to work, and your results will vary by title. Additionally, try the same imaging process with a program like Toast, for potentially better results.

Making an image of our Drop Point: Alaska disc. You betcha we could run that game without the disc when we were done. (Click to embiggen!)