How to play PC games on Android. How to play Android games on your computer. Full-fledged Nox App Player emulator

Games for mobile devices are developing by leaps and bounds. Just five years ago, users had primitive projects like Candy Crush Saga, Talking Tom, and self-made quizzes. After a couple of years, games appeared with more exciting gameplay, graphics and even plot. These include:

Asphalt 8;
Dead Trigger 2;
Modern series.

Even then, questions began to arise about how to run Android games on a PC. But even here, development has not stopped, and the market now offers full games, like X-COM: Enemy Within and GTA San Andreas, desktop analogues MOBA– Mobile Legends or Vainglory and real ports, for example, Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft and others. Such abundance cannot but please active users of mobile devices, but it causes envy among many PC gamers, especially considering the fact that most games are for tablets and smartphones distributed free of charge, monetized only through in-game purchases. Therefore, solutions for playing on a computer in Android were not long in coming. They existed before, but now they are tailored for specific purposes - getting a full gaming experience from mobile games on your computer.

Android games

First of all, it is worth saying that we are talking exclusively about how to run games on Android, because iOS devices do not at all provide the ability to install games from external sources.

Apk files, which are installation packages, cannot simply be launched on Windows systems. This is due to completely different libraries and frameworks used in different OSes. Therefore, the option that is used is emulators.

The concept of an emulator

They represent themselves virtual mobile devices, running inside your desktop system. " Computer in a computer" Of course, to launch them, and subsequently to operate the games, you will need enough advanced hardware, therefore, if you are hoping to play mobile games because of their low demands, you will have to discard this idea. Or play something really primitive that doesn’t consume a lot of computer resources.

There are already quite a lot of paid and free emulators. They offer different capabilities and interact differently with your device in terms of performance. If your goal is just to try the game, choose something simpler and faster. If you want to play constantly, then you should aim wisely. AND don't forget about performance. To the resources consumed by the program itself, you need to add those that the game will need.

The last caveat is that many emulators are launched using virtualization technologies, which differs depending on the manufacturer of your PC chip. To enable it or make sure that it is active, you need to go to BIOS.

Perhaps, the most popular solution running mobile games on Windows is . This is not a full-fledged emulator and is designed specifically for games. It is written entirely in Russian and has a very nice interface. This is not a virtual smartphone on your screen, but a full-fledged PC program that skillfully hides its roots. And the process of working with it is ideally designed specifically for players.

To use BlueStacks, download the program installation file and run it. After installation, open the application and you will see the start window. Here, in the process, personal recommendations will be generated and all installed games will be located, but now you should use the search. Download the desired game from Google Play and launch it. It will open in a new tab, allowing you to quickly and easily navigate throughout the program and switch between games. Of course, you can always launch the desired apk if it is not in the store. On the left side there is an extremely convenient toolbar for taking screenshots, changing orientation, and so on.

Among the additional features - streaming of a running game process directly to Twitch and syncs with your Android device.

The next one, this time a full-fledged one, not just a game option - . This is already a real emulator, but it looks just as high quality and is extremely pleasant to use. Plus, it is also as close as possible to the experience of a regular smartphone or tablet. In this case, it is an add-on for Android called CyanogenMod and the Nova Launcher.

The user has full access to the settings of the emulator itself, where you can specify the desired resolution, performance level and other details; and device settings for choosing a language, etc.

Of course, here, in addition to the standard Google Play, you can use apk to install applications, take screenshots and run several programs at the same time.

is also a real emulator, but it comes even closer to the standard Android interface, albeit only version 4.0. All the same features of other programs mentioned before are relevant for this solution. Google Play, apk, screenshots and full support for the hardware of your PC.

Finally, it wouldn’t hurt to consider an option that would be suitable not only for gaming, but also, for example, for development. Genymotion is an emulator that interacts with integrated development environments on Windows and thus allows you to test software or games almost in real conditions. You can choose it if, in addition to games, you are a developer of your own projects.

Additionally worth noting is Leapdroid. This is a solution, the quality and performance of which was noted by many real users on the network, but having appeared recently, it just as suddenly ceased to be supported by developers. Of course, it won't be difficult to find working distributions, but be extremely careful with malicious files.

There are also from Chinese developers, but the official website of the program is not working at the moment, so the program cannot be fully recommended. However, it gives excellent performance and uses your PC to its full potential. Theoretically, any, even the most complex games will launch and work at 100%. Mistakes are possible, but this is a fair price.

It is also considered a fast and convenient solution for launching Android programs, but it looks rather meager and offers a minimum of functions, so it is mentioned only for information.

Conclusion

Running mobile applications on a PC is now really in demand, given the quality of their execution. The only thing you need to remember is to compare the power of your device with the requirements of the emulator and the program being launched. If your needs are minimal, choose a program with the simplest requirements and start playing. Each of the solutions mentioned in the review is worthy of becoming your desktop solution. It is worth highlighting only Genymotion, which has a wider range of capabilities. And once again remind you about the possibility of infecting your device when downloading installation files not from the official developer sites.

To play Android games on a computer, you need emulators - special programs that allow you to deploy a mobile OS environment on a PC. If you plan to constantly use the system, then it would be reasonable to install Android on your computer.

Android Emulators

The easiest way to install Android games on your PC is to use emulators. The most famous program that allows you to download and run Android games on a PC is the Bluestacks emulator. It is aimed at entertaining the user, installing applications, and is needed to run games, while most other emulators are more suitable for Android software developers.

You can download the program for free on the official website http://www.bluestacks.com/ru. The installation distribution weighs more than 300 MB.

Run the downloaded installer and accept the terms of the agreement.
Select a folder to install the program.
Without changing the installation parameters, click “Install”.

We launch the downloaded and installed program to play. To figure out how to play Android games, you need to complete the initial setup of Bluestacks. Set the necessary parameters for the emulator:

After completing the initial setup, you will be taken to the Play Market. We figured out how to install it, now let's see how to play Android games on a computer:

Find the desired application in the Play Market, click “Install”.
Wait for the installation to complete and launch the game on the “Android” tab in the emulator.

To find and install other apps, use the built-in search on the Android tab. Enter the name of the game program, and then click on the “Search on Play Market” button.

There are other emulators that help answer the question of how to play games on Android OS on your PC:

MEmu;
Nox App Player;
Leapdroid;
Koplayer;
Droid4X.

These programs offer different functionality, but they all have one thing in common - these emulators are created so that the question of how to play computer games on Android does not remain insoluble for the user.

Installing Android on a computer

If you are interested not only in the question of how to play Android games through a computer, but also in the very possibility of using Android on computers, then try installing this system as a second one, next to Windows. To solve this problem, you will need an Android x86 image recorded on a flash drive using the Rufus program.

When booting from the installation drive, you will have the opportunity to watch Android on your computer without installation. The system offers the same functions as on any mobile device.

Instead of pure Android x86, you can use Remix OS - a special build of Android for installation on a PC. But if you only have a question about how to launch games, then all these difficulties with installing a full-fledged system will be unnecessary. For gaming applications, the capabilities of the emulators listed above are quite sufficient.

PC toys for Android

Users may also have the opposite desire - to play PC games on Android. Special software will also help you play computer games on Android. There are two ways to figure out how to run PC games:

Broadcast gameplay from PC to Android.
Run PC games on your mobile device.

The first method requires a stable one with good speed and a computer at hand. So first, let's see how to run PC games on a mobile device. You can do this using the ExaGear Strategies or ExaGear RPG application. To run the program you need an ARM v7 processor and Android 4 or higher. How to install the game:

Download and install ExaGear Strategies or ExaGear RPG on your mobile device.
Connect your phone to your PC. Move the unpacked distribution of the toy to the ExaGear directory, which will be in the root of the phone/tablet memory.
Disconnect your phone and launch the application. The program will automatically find the installer executable file. All you have to do is install the toy and start the installation process.

Launched in this way can be not only popular strategies and RPGs, but also well-known projects in other genres: Fallout, Heroes of Might and Magic, Pilot Brothers, Unreal Tournament, Quake, Postal, etc. We are talking about old toys with low system requirements. If you want to run a modern game, you will have to stream the gameplay from your computer to the screen of the device, which will actually become a controller.

The concept of streaming a PC game to a mobile device is nothing new. Nvidia's Grid Service, for example, allows players to access PC games via consoles and tablets, while Limelight's Game Streaming opens the door to Android devices, provided you have a GameStream-compatible computer.

Remotr goes further and allows you to play almost any computer games on any Android device. The app is free and works well, but with some caveats.

The service consists of a Windows client and an Android application (an iPhone version is in development). I tested the application on a fairly powerful system with a Core i7 and a Nexus 7 Google tablet.

What does Remotr do? In a nutshell, it mirrors your computer screen on your mobile device while the app provides a front-end interface for selecting the game you want to play.

Equally important, the app shows on-screen controls to simulate the use of the controller, keyboard, and/or mouse you use on your computer.

To get started, you simply download and install the Windows client (which is compatible with Windows 7 and later), and then install Remotr on your Android device. You will need to create an account, then log in from both applications. Therefore, Remotr can work not only over a local Wi-Fi network, but also over a cellular network (in this case, Internet traffic will be consumed).

After completing these steps, you should see that your computer is recognized in the mobile application. Click on it to open a panel tiled with games you have installed, then click on any of them to launch the game.

And here's what's confusing, as it's not immediately clear how to set up or even control the game. For example, although I was able to run Tomb Raider, I had no idea how to recreate my desktop keyboard and mouse buttons. And at the moment, the developers do not offer any detailed documentation.

After some fiddling, however (starting with clicking on the magic wand icon), I was able to display the equivalents of the WASD keys and mouse buttons. And at least he was able to move Lara Croft around the playing field. Remotr has built-in control profiles for Counter-Strike and Team Fortress, but it would be great if there were more profiles.

Ultimately, I don't think I'll play this way, as the controls, even when mapped correctly, are very awkward. And there are a lot of great native Android games, and even Android ports of board games, so for the most part I don't see the point of it all.

However, Remotr works as promised, and in Tomb Raider at least everything went surprisingly smoothly. If you have even a passing interest in playing board games on your phone or tablet, Remotr is certainly worth a try.

Android emulators come with programs and accompanying files that significantly slow down your system.

How others do it

How BlueStacks does it

How others do it

emulator developers are able to incorporate any software into their product. In the past, there have been known cases of the introduction of cryptocurrency miners, malware and spyware capable of unauthorized connections to the network

Because BlueStacks works directly with developers and technology providers, we have the ability to have the best game compatibility in the market. As an Android gaming platform, not an emulator, our developer partners trust us to provide fair and balanced gameplay and in return provide us with early access to games and content in order to make sure the games run well when it’s your turn to play them. Because of this, we take extraordinary measures to make sure our users play fairly and do not cheat. This includes controlling Root access as well as some other deeper developer integrations to make cheating incredibly difficult for even the most tech-savvy gamers.

Myth #4

No matter how much RAM and CPU cores I allocate to my Android emulator, it will never be as good as my mobile phone/tablet.

How others do it?

How does it?

How others do it?

An average, budget PC with 8GB RAM and a quad core CPU will give you the performance of an expensive phone that might cost more than two of those Windows PCs combined.

More importantly, your brand new Android phone will be old in 2 years and your battery will die even quicker if you play any demanding games. For the price of a high-end phone, you can have a near lifetime of high-end forward-compatible Android gameplay on a good PC instead of cycling new phones every 2 years as games become more resource intensive and your phone struggles to keep up .

How does it?

BlueStacks has various tweaks such as the different graphics modes, and tips & tricks to make BlueStacks perform better than the fastest of phones, and give you a better gaming experience than possible on even the most expensive Android devices. BlueStacks’ Hyper-G graphics leverage your entire system to produce an optimized gaming experience regardless of specifications. Whether you have an integrated graphics card or a GTX 1080ti, you can run the latest demanding Android games with incredible performance better than any Android phone.

This question is increasingly of interest to many people for the simple reason that over the past few years, there has been a huge leap in the evolution of Android games.

The reason for this, of course, was the increase in the capabilities of Android devices. Today, devices with average technical characteristics allow you to play quite impressive games with decent graphics - let alone flagships.

Android games are quite popular and varied. That is why they already occupy a significant place in the gaming industry, on a par with computer ones. Online games are especially popular. Many of them are entire universes where the hero can literally live his life in adventures and wanderings. Due to this, users would prefer to be able to play them the traditional way - using their PC or laptop. This is exactly what will be discussed below. You will find out a lot of useful information and also learn a lot. So, let's go!

How to use Android on your PC

It’s worth starting with exactly how Android will be installed on your PC: it will be a full-fledged operating system, along with Windows and Linux, or it will be launched on the basis of one of these operating systems - as a virtual machine or an emulator. The OS installation method will be divided into these categories:

A complete operating system.
Android OS virtual machine.
Android emulator.

Android OS: install on PC

What's cool about this particular method? Only because all the resources of your PC will be used specifically for this operating system. That is, in fact, you can use Android like Windows.

1. In order to install Android, you will first, of course, need an installation image - Android 6.0 Marshmallow.
2. Now you need to make an installation disk from this image. Since 2016 is already ending in our yard, I don’t want to talk about disks at all - we will make a bootable flash drive. I will use the UltraISO program. Download and install it.

open the program;
in the directory located in the lower left corner, find the desired directory (for me this is the folder Dowload), click on it twice. Its contents will be visible on the right. Find the image and double-click on it. Higher it will open;

now hover over the section and select Create a hard disk image;

select the one you need flash drive and press Write down.

Note: The flash drive must be empty (formatted).

3. Now it’s the turn to install the recorded image. Insert the USB flash drive into your PC and reboot it. During startup (when you see the logo), hold down the button to go to the BIOS boot menu. There, select the drive where the Android installation is stored.

Note:
1) You can call the boot menu using the F8, F12 or Delete buttons (depending on the brand of your PC); when you turn it on, you should see quickly flashing instructions indicating what exactly you need to press.
2) The Boot menu can be disabled in the BIOS. Therefore, you need to enter the BIOS and enable it. See exactly how below:

4. From this point the installation process begins. First, you need to indicate that you want to install Android on your PC. Select the appropriate item.

5. Now select the partition where the system will be installed (one of the existing hard drives).

6. If the selected disk contains only the Android system, then select the ext2 or ext3 file system. If there is already an operating system on this disk, then Android needs to be installed “nearby”. Therefore, specify that the file system has no format.

7. If your computer has several operating systems, be sure to install GRUB - when launched, this utility will help you select the desired system.

8. Next, the installation will begin. After that, start the system.

9. That's it, your PC has a full-fledged Android OS, and you can use the corresponding applications and play any games. To do this, carry out the usual settings (time zone, date, etc.). And enter the Play Market, where you can download everything you need.

Android Virtual Machine

The Android virtual machine is an emulation of the Android system using the resources of your PC based on the main operating system. We will now look at exactly how to create a machine and run emulation.

1.We will work in the VirtualBOX environment. You can download the installation program from this link. Install it.
2. Now you need the image that is linked in the previous paragraph. If you have already downloaded it, then proceed to the next step.
3. Open VB and create a new virtual machine:

click the button Create;

specify the name and type of OS ( Linux and Oracle respectively);

The amount of memory for the VM must be no less 2 GB;

if you are not a software developer, then the file type of the new disk is not important - select the first one;

complete the process by pressing Create.

4. Now launch the newly created virtual machine.

She will ask you to specify the image from which the Android OS will be installed. This is where you have to choose the above image.

5. The installation begins, similar to that described above, except that you still need to configure or create a partition for the future system. So, when the function window appears Choose Partition:

select item Create/Modify partition;

create a new partition in it ( new);

check the box Bootable. Click to save Write, further - yes.

After this, everything happens as in the full installation step (read above).

Android emulators

The program is an emulator of the Android operating system; it is a ready-made application that only needs to be installed. Emulators can be oriented: that is, it can have a version specifically for games (with other parts cut out); or for communication: a version where all sorts of messengers are installed. Below, I will describe several of the most popular, convenient and functional emulators.

BlueStacks is the best emulator for games

Since this article primarily concerns Android games, I will start with an emulator focused on them - BlueStacks.

Why is he the best? It's simple - the fewer functions, the higher the performance. That is, the absence of complete emulation of all processes of a regular Android system makes the program much easier and faster.

On the main page, you immediately see the currently popular games. You can download them. In addition, there is a complete catalog of games with search. In fact, these are games from the Play Market, only in a different interface. That's why log into your Google account right away.
Download BlueStacks from the official website.

Full-fledged Nox App Player emulator

This is by far the best and most functional emulator. In comparison with all the ones I described in this article, it is somewhat ahead in terms of performance and functionality.
After installation, you will receive a full-fledged Android with standard software and Play Market. In addition, it has a convenient functional panel. With its help, you can work with apk files, use all the capabilities of GPS, create screenshots, etc.

At the end of this brief review, I will say that if you want to play your favorite game without slowdowns and glitches, then Nox App Player is exactly what you need. Download from the official website.

Koplayer is the best in gaming control emulation

To be honest, Koplayer is not much different from, for example, Nox App Player (I mean productivity characteristics).

But, along with this, it also allows you to regulate the allocation of your PC’s RAM.

Separately, it is worth mentioning the convenient and functional device for assigning keys to specific functions in a game or application. The same applies to gestures. After all, this is very important - you can customize the controls in the game to suit you.

Droid4X Emulator

This emulator differs from all others in one rather interesting function - the ability to bind the coordinates of certain points on the screen to any of the keys on the keyboard. In my opinion, this is very convenient, considering that almost all games on Android OS are oriented towards touch devices.
It is also worth noting that Droid4X completely emulates the entire system. It has everything your phone has.

You can download it from the official website.

Genymotion - several versions at once

And lastly in this list of the best Android OS emulators, I will describe Genymotion, which allows you to choose the version of the OS to run.

Why the last one? Yes, I agree - it has everything. But, in my opinion, it is more aimed at developers than at ordinary users. With its help, it is convenient to test developed applications and games on different versions of the Android OS.

If you still want this emulator, then you can download it. Register, download (necessarily using the first link), install.

Notes:

1. A special version of VirtualBox will be installed along with Genymotion (you don’t need to run it). Therefore, if you had another version on your PC, delete it.
2. If there is an error mounting an image, run Genymotion as an administrator.

Brief summary

As you probably already understood, installing Android on a PC is not very difficult. The main thing is to know what exactly needs to be done. Now you know this and, I hope, you will be able to figure it out. Good luck!