Apple Mac computers are not known to be great gaming machines but make no mistake, the M-series Apple Silicon chips are more powerfull than you think. Benchmarks do not tell the full story. You have to experience it yourself to fully understand the innovation these processors are.
This blog post is supposed to be a high level overview to see how you can play which game on your Apple Silicon Mac. If a game is directly compatible with Mac you do not have to read any further. But if you want to play anything that is not designed to be played on Mac, this post if for you.
Windows Games
There are several different ways to run windows games. Some games work via one method but not the others, some might work all ways and few do not work at all. I could not find a general rule. It is trail and error to see what works. Apperantly it is a combination of game launcher, DirectX version and different system checks various games perform when starting. It feels like if the few games that do not run would not perform system checks they could run anyway.
A good resource is AppleGamineWiki.
Whiskey
Whiskey is free, builds on top of wine and uses Apple’s Game Porting Toolkit. Via Whiskey you create so called bottles in which you can install windows games. I personally have one bottle for each launcher. You could try to put all your game launchers into one bottle or create a bottle for every single game. The overhead for storage should be minimal but more bottles give you more flexibility to change settings for single games.
Crossover
Crossover feels similar to Whiskey but works differently under the hood. It costs money but offeres a greater compatibility.
Parallels Desktop
Parallels Desktop is a famous virtualization tool for money. You can use it to setup a full windows virtual machine and use it not just for gaming but for every other windows program as well.
VMware Fusion Pro
VMware Fusion Pro is now free for personal use. You can also try to run Windows games via this hypervisor.
UTM
UTM is a free alternative to Parallels but is not compatible with most games.
Other platforms
There is a huge eco system of emulators for various gaming consoles. But keep in mind, Apple Silicon chips are powerfull but not infinitly powerfull. Current generations of console games like PS5 and Xbox Series you propably will not be able to emulate.
OpenEmu
OpenEmu is simply amazing. It is like a launcher for various retro consoles. For each console you want to use you need a so called ‘core’, which can be downloaded via OpenEmu itself. Then, depending on the console, you need a BIOS file, keys or a basic ROM. And then you still need the actual game. If you do not own the console and the desired game yourself you can probably find it online provided by a friendly fellow.
If a console is not supported by OpenEmu there are several dedicated emulators.