There are a few ways you can play Windows games on an Android device. You can stream them using a service like GeForce Now or an app like Moonlight. You can use Steam’s Remote Play feature if your hardware is up to the task. And now you can also use Winlator to run Windows games directly on your Android phone, tablet or TV box.

Winlator is a GitHub project being developed under the MIT license. It aims to simplify the process of getting Wine and Box up and running on your devices so that you can start gaming right away.

The results are already pretty impressive.  On developer BrunoSX’s YouTube channel you can see The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion running on high settings. Yes, it’s more than 15 years old, but it’s still a great game… as well as a nice demonstration of what Winlator is capable of right now.

Other users have managed to get several other games to run, including Fallout 3, Deus Ex, Mass Effect 2, Hitman 2 and Gothic.

If you’ve got a library full of older games that you’d love to be able to play on a phone or tablet, Winlator may be up to the task. Just follow the instructions on the Winlator project page and drop some games into the Downloads folder on your Android device.

You may need to play with settings a bit to get games running smoothly (or beyond the splash screen in some cases). If you don’t mind a wee bit of tinkering, though, maybe Winlator is just the thing to help you play through the Windows game backlog you’ve been slowly building over the past decade-and-a-half or so.

via Android Authority and BetaNews

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Lee Mathews

Computer tech, blogger, husband, father, and avid MSI U100 user.

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  1. Okay, but nobody mentions that you need a rooted device because otherwise you can’t access the OBB folder past android 12

  2. Back in 2014 or 2015 I successfully got Skyrim to run. It unfortunately crashed and I forgot how I did it. I wish I wrote down the instructions, but I’m pretty sure I used some kind of Wine like program. That or I had an app that would let me run Windows games with commands and I launched Skyrim with it. Now we’re one step closer to having Skyrim on our phones without any crazy workarounds like what I did

  3. Okay, now it’s just really stupid.
    First, a Zeebo console emulator, now a Windows game emulator?

    I don’t think i’ll play this emulator anytime because i have a computer already, this is stupid.

  4. Tried Oblivion on my S21 Ultra (Exynos), using the VirGL driver as recommended for Mali GPUs, as soon as it starts playing some music the game freezes (the app itself doesn’t freeze and I can exit it normally). Before that I’ve also tried Witcher 1 and it was the same story, some music begins to play but the screen stays black and the game freezes. Is this the usual “Exynos cannot game” thing or am I doing something wrong?

  5. that’s a false positive.
    Also, the app’s code is available for free (open source) on Github, there’s no way it is malicious.

    1. I’d say something like “the app’s code is available for free (open source) on Github, there’s no way it is malicious” as a sarcastic remark. The code for Web Environment Integrity is also hosted on Github and that’s one of the most malicious additions to browsers I’ve seen in a long time.
      Not to mention that you can find code for straight up malware on it, it’s just usually labeled as such.
      Mind you, I don’t actually presume Winlator is malware, I just think you’d ought to be more careful with blanket statements like that.

    1. If you don’t know about Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion, you can’t be my friend! Even Captain Picard knows about this!

  6. not sure, but this could be where WINE / Wineskin might consider for the apple silicon once apple pulls the plug for Rosetta2?