Yes, that’s right you can now play Counter-Strike 1.6 on an Android tablet or smartphone, a first person shooter game, which was originally developed for Windows as an ad-on for Half-life another popular game from way back, which you may have heard off!
If you’re a game playing veteran then there’s a good chance that you are excited right about now, as you know that this isn’t just any version of Counter-Strike, it is one of the originals! Furthermore, this is not an official Valve game release or a recreation of the game, but an actual game in its own right ported over to the Android platform thanks to Alibek Omarov.
How to Get Counter-Strike Running on Android?
Before I go any further, to get this to work you are not only going to have to have a Steam account to get important files to make it work, but also have the game already available in your steam account.
Here’s some advice, if you are used to heading over to Google Play to download and install your games then, STOP!! and think about what you are about to do. Clicking here will take you to github.com where and I’ll be honest it is not entirely clear on where look for the game.
I assumed it would be a file to click and download, but I am sorry to say it’s not going to be that simple at all!
On that particular page the only reference to counter-strike that I could see, was in the first link of the table with the heading “Repositories contributed to” clicking on that link takes you here yet another page on what seems like a wild goose chase.
However, I have discovered how and here it is. Remember to follow these instructions carefully.
- You will need to install the APK file. Now if you have a multi-core smartphone or tablet install the file with the omp postfix. If you have a single-core device, you may have problems due to the omp version available.
- Moving on you will need the latest version of Xash3D Android, you can get that here.
- Make sure you have an SD card in your device and copy over the cstrike and valve folders from you CS1.6 installation, this needs to be sent to xash on the SD card.
- And that is it you are done, you can now run Counter-Strike 1.6 on your Android device.
Final thoughts
I got there in the end and had this running relatively smoothly on my smartphone, however I didn’t find it easy to setup and unless you’re used to doing this kind of installation I recommend you read what you can and if stuck reach out for advice.
For those of you who have followed these instructions and succeeded, I wish you many hours of first person shooter fun…enjoy!
