There’s something interesting about playing iconic PC games on your Android device. Be it reliving classics or getting into modern ports that run surprisingly well, the mobile experience today feels closer than ever to desktop gaming. Here are 10 PC legends you can carry in your pocket, each giving the same thrill, strategy, or chaos that made them favorites and most popular on PC.
1. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
Rockstar did a great job with the release of the Android port of San Andreas in 2013. GTA: San Andreas brings the full open-world action to your phone without cutting anything out. In playthrough, you follow CJ through gang wars in three massive cities, and the whole map from the original is here, with Los Santos, San Fierro, Las Venturas, and all the countryside between them. The twin-stick controls take maybe ten minutes to get comfortable with, then you’re good. What makes this work on mobile is the checkpoints’ inclusion in the longer missions, so you don’t need to replay 20 minutes of driving every time you mess up a shootout. All the side stuff is here too, such as gym workouts, gang territory takeovers, and car customization. It’s the same game that ate up weeks back in 2004, just in your pocket now.
2. Doom & Doom II
Doom and Doom II are popular shooters in history. These are modern FPS games, and playing them on Android is a nostalgia punch fast, tight, and intense. You fight demons, collect keycards, and never stop moving. The soundtrack is the blood pumping, and the level design holds up ridiculously well. Even after all these years, nothing beats the feeling of clearing a room with the Super Shotgun and watching pixelated monsters explode into red mist.
3. Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition
Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition Android version is a full-scale RPG crammed into mobile form, and it works. You build a character through proper D&D rules including picking classes, allocating stats, and choosing spells from a list of over 200. The story takes you through political intrigue and dungeon crawls that challenge you tactically. Combat is real-time but you can pause whenever to issue commands to your whole party. The touch controls let you tap targets and drag selection boxes, which is more intuitive than the original mouse setup once you’re used to it. Plan for 60+ hours if you’re doing the main campaign and expansion. It autosaves constantly, so you can play in chunks without losing progress.
4. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (KOTOR I & II)
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic tells a better Star Wars story than most of the movies. You’re thousands of years before the films, building your own Jedi or Sith through actual choices that matter. Combat is turn-based, so you pause, queue up actions for your party, then watch it play out. Both games are huge, requiring 40 to 50 hours each to beat and the mobile versions include content that was cut from the original console releases. The dialogue system tracks Light and Dark side points, and where you land affects which Force powers you can use and how the story resolves. Your companions have their own storylines that unlock as you travel together. These are proper RPGs that happen to have lightsabers in them.
KOTOR I & KOTOR II mobile version doesn’t cut corners either, it’s the full experience, complete with long missions, party management, and cinematic storylines. Even on a small screen, the plot twists play as hard as they did the first time I played them on PC.
5. Stardew Valley
When you need a break from shooting and stabbing, Stardew Valley is great comfort. This game involves farming, fishing, mining, and building relationships in a small town. It sounds simple but it’s highly addictive. In this game, you plant crops that grow in real-time across seasons, explore mines filled with monsters and resources, and talk to townsfolk who have different personalities and storylines. The mobile version is same as PC with the same content, updates, and multiplayer works over WiFi. Touch controls are straightforward: tap where you want to go, hold to use tools. An in-game day is about 15 real minutes, so you can play in short bursts or lose entire evenings to it.
6. The 7th Guest: Remastered
The 7th Guest: Remastered drops you in a haunted mansion where you solve puzzles to uncover what happened. It’s an early ‘90s FMV game rebuilt in HD, which delivers a campy horror thing with modern revamp. The puzzles range from logic problems to pattern recognition – some are clever, some will stump you for way too long. The mansion is creepy amazing and the atmosphere is what keeps you going through the tough challenges. There’s a hint system if you get stuck, which you probably will at least twice. It’s a specific kind of game including part horror, part brain teaser, but if you like mystery games with mood, this nails it. It made me jump a couple of times when I wasn’t expecting it.
7. RollerCoaster Tycoon Classic
In RollerCoaster Tycoon Classic, you play as managing a theme park, which includes building coasters, handling finances, and keeping guests happy. This combines the best of the first two games, so you get 95 scenarios with different objectives. Some want you to hit a park value target, others need a certain number of guests, or a coaster with specific excitement ratings. The isometric view works fine with pinch-zoom, and laying track piece by piece is easier on touch than with a mouse.
Guest AI is detailed – they get hungry, tired, nauseous from rough coasters. You need to balance ticket prices, staff wages, and marketing while designing rides that don’t kill people. RollerCoaster Tycoon Classic mobile version has all the depth of the PC original, streamlined for touch controls. There’s nothing quite like seeing your perfect theme park come alive until one coaster goes off the rails and everything crashes.
8. Hitman: Blood Money — Reprisal
The developers actually did it, they made Hitman: Blood Money work on mobile, and it’s good. You’re still the same cold, methodical Agent 47, who sneaks through high-security areas and turns “accidents” into assassinations. The Reprisal edition improves the controls and adds features from new Hitman games, so it’s smooth but still true to its roots. Disguises let you walk into restricted areas as long as you don’t act suspicious around certain NPCs. It’s proper stealth that respects your intelligence. Pulling off a silent kill using only touch input feels greatly satisfying.
9. Don’t Starve: Pocket Edition
If you love survival games with a dark, quirky edge, Don’t Starve is a must-play. It throws you into a weird wilderness full of monsters, hunger, and madness, wrapped in a gloomy Tim Burton-style. The day/night cycle is crucial: you have limited time to collect resources before night comes, and if you’re caught without a light source, you die instantly. You learn the crafting system – 140+ items across multiple tech tiers. Death is permanent unless you’ve built resurrection items, which you won’t have for your first several runs. The mobile port is released with same PC title content such as crafting, exploration, and that constant sense of tension, nicely intact. You’ll die. A lot. But that’s half the fun. Each restart teaches you something new about the bizarre world you’re trapped in.
10. This War of Mine
Unlike other survival games, War of Mine puts you in the shoes of civilians in a war zone. You’ll scavenge for food, take care of your group, and make tough decisions to survive another day. Every choice has consequences, and every loss is hard. Do you steal from other survivors who might be worse off than you? Do you trade medicine for food when someone in your group is sick? People can die from injury, illness or give up mentally. The game runs last 20-45 days depending on when the ceasefire happens. There’s no action hero gameplay here, only consequence and survival. The mobile version doesn’t soften any of it; it’s one of the best games ever made and the Android version gets it all.
