The original 'Counter-Strike' video game is now available on your phone
The eSports landscape is generally dominated by three types of games. There are MOBAs, such as League of Legends and Heroes of the Storm. There are fighting games, like the Street Fighter and Super Smash Bros. franchises. Then, there are first-person shooters, where games like Counter-Strike: Global Offensive rule the battlefield.
The legacy of such games can be traced directly back to the original Counter-Strike, which dominated college dorms and LAN tournaments back in its glory days. If you're of a certain age and have an affinity for FPS shenanigans, then you undoubtedly spent countless hours with your handy Desert Eagle as you yelled at people for alleged wall hacking.
And now you can relive those splendid times in the palm of your hand, thanks to one incredible gamer and programmer. Alibek Omarov sent the nostalgic corners of our brain into overdrive recently when he released a fully functioning version of Counter-Strike for Android operating systems.
The current version of Counter-Strike, CS:GO, is one of the largest competitive eSports on the planet, with one championship-winning team recently taking home a combined prize pool of $500,000.
What do FPS eSports champions do in their downtime? They play paintball, of course -- and it looks like an absolute blast:
As for the original CS, Omarov shared the progress of his endeavors during testing and programming phases, which makes the final accomplishment even more impressive:
The instructions on how to get the original Counter-Strike onto your Android-powered device are a bit complicated and not for the computer novice. If you're interested in giving it a go, you can find more information in this Reddit thread -- but be careful. We wouldn't want you bricking your phone.
The controls are reportedly kind of wonky, which is to be expected from a touch screen. We're not going to complain, however, since we're still trying to get over the fact that we can play this game on our phones.
Omarov has also apparently worked on porting the classic Half-Life game on which Counter-Strike is based to virtual reality. You can get some sense of how impressive that finished product would be from this side-by-side YouTube clip:
On the other hand, if we really want to play VR Counter-Strike, that paintball course looks pretty tempting.
