You are currently viewing Anyone Emulate Android?

Anyone Emulate Android?

I’m looking for an Android emulator to play some of the mobile games I’d normally play on my iPhone but on a PC instead. I hear Android emulators work pretty well, and that there’s not a lot of legal issues with using one. Truth to that, anyone?

I saw a lot of Twitch Streamers recently playing that new Lineage game on their PC which is what me down this road of thinking that I might be able to play games like Animal Crossing Pocket Edition on my PC since it uses a Nintendo Account to save progress.

Anyone have experience and want to weigh in?

  1. Can you play games multiplayer?
  2. Anyone successfully played a game on PC that they also played on a handheld and had their progress transfer over seamlessly? (I’m thinking it would have to be a game with a third-party account system since I’m an iOS user and not Android)
  3. How are microtransactions handled? Is it tied to something like a Google Play account?

And lastly, what emulator do you guys use? I keep seeing Bluestacks as the one people recommend, but I’m open to suggestions. Thanks!

  • I use BlueStacks. Basically you log into your Google (play) account, so it’s the same account as far as money goes. Sometimes loading up it’s a bit slow but playing games it’s fine. I’ve played several such as Order and Chaos, never had any issues.

    You can play the same as you’d pay on your mobile device, in mmo games you are on the same server, everything is the same. Progress has always saved like normal also, never had anything mess up. Hope that helps!

  • I’ve play Clash of Clans on an iPhone, Samsung tablet and PC (Bluestacks). Like kaozz said, you log into Bluestacks with your Google Play account, and I’ve never had any issues with progress across the devices. Transactions are linked to the Play account.

    Keep in mind that some (most?) handheld games are not designed with a mouse in mind. For instance, in CoC I’m slower with troop deployment and more likely to misclick when playing on the PC. Not a big problem when farming, but I won’t do a war attack on the PC!

    It’s the same problem with Clash Royale, I’m just faster on a hand-held device (although the game plays fine). Basically, I’ve found Bluestacks to be a great emulator, but I don’t use it for competitive multiplayer (might just be my mouse skills that suck!)

  • I use Bluestacks, but as far as I know (as of this posting) Animal Crossing is not available for download on it. There may be a work around (I haven’t looked into downloading the .apk) but currently you cannot download the game onto the device proper.

  • I did look into this once but it seemed like too much trouble so I bought a dual-OS tablet – Windows and Android – instead. And then I never really used the Android part…

  • I haven’t used Bluestacks in a while, and haven’t tried the last version so I can’t say if it has improved, but I recall the performance wasn’t really that great back in version 2. The user experience is the best from everything I tested, however, and the new one looks pretty good from screenshots.

    But of all emulators I tried before (and I tried a lot), the one I thought to be the best was Droid4X. Setting it up is a little more involved than Bluestacks but not enough to not be worth the trouble, and the performance is pretty much flawless, as in better than any mobile device I compared it to.

    I would recommend testing Bluestacks first, see if it performs well enough and if you like their launcher (which used to be a piece of crap), and if doesn’t work for you give Droid4X a try.

    • Sorry, I totally spaced on your questions:

      1. Can you play games multiplayer? Never tried, but I assume yes.

      2. Anyone successfully played a game on PC that they also played on a handheld and had their progress transfer over seamlessly? (I’m thinking it would have to be a game with a third-party account system since I’m an iOS user and not Android)

      I really only play Astronest anymore, and it’s tied to a Facebook login, so… it’s always transferred just fine. I can play on my phone, walk to the pc, launch Nox, turn the game off on the phone and log in on Nox and my progress is right there.

      I used to play CoC and Clash Royale also, and never had any problems with either of them.

      3. How are microtransactions handled? Is it tied to something like a Google Play account? Android uses Google Play, yes. All games I’ve played have been from the PLay Store, so they’ve all used Google Play for the microtransactions if I’ve chosen to use them.

  • My husband and I use Nox and we’ve never had any big issues with it. mostly it’s to use a macro for farming in Final Fantasty Brave Exvius. ^^ It uses your google play account, although I’m not sure about the multiplayer. My gameplay has seamlessly transferred between my phone and pc too. all i need to do is restart the application in either one for it to update my current energy, etc. 🙂