ExaGear Strategies emulator brings classic PC strategy games to Android

Android may have plenty of games to whittle away the hours on these days, including a range of high quality emulators. However, PC gaming emulators are few and far between, with Winulator previously being one of the few options available if you fancy some Starcraft or Caeser III. If you’re itching to replay some of the many PC gaming classics, then you might be interested in a new emulator named ExaGear Strategies.

The emulator, built by Russian start-up company Eltechs, is aimed solely at PC strategy games. However, this software is part of an upcoming range of applications which aim to bring classic PC games to Android smartphones or tablets.

There is lots of clever trickery involved in getting old x86 PC games to run on ARM hardware, including binary translation and using popular Linux tools like WINE, which produces results that can be a bit hit and miss, depending on the game you are trying to emulate. At the time of writing, ExaGear officially only supports Heroes of Might and Magic 3, Disciples 2, and Civilization 3. However, a variety of other games are apparently quite playable on the emulator.

ExaGear offers up two control schemes, “Helium” and “Cuprum”, specifically designed to make playing these PC classics a little easier on a smartphone or tablet. On the whole, the point and click nature of these strategy games lends itself quite nicely to a larger tablet display and touch interface.

As with all emulator apps, no games are included with the software. Instead, you’ll have to find some clever way of porting those classics onto your tablet’s microSD card.

If you’re interested, you can trial the emulator for free for a three-days via the Play Store download. After that, you’ll need to cough up $7 per control scheme, so $14 if you want both of them, which makes the app rather expensive given the limited number of supported games.  Instructions on setup everything up can be found over on the ExaGear website.