Getting retro console and PC games running on virtually everything is something of a sport. Normally, weird ports of Doom to oddball devices take centre stage, and by comparison, running the original Half-Life on a late 2000s Nokia feels relatively tame. However, having just assembled a sizable Windows 98 rig to play that specific era of shooters, I'm pretty shook that it works on a precursor to the iPhone.
If you've been specifically dreaming of playing Half-Life 1 on a Nokia N95, you've got developer Dante D. Leoncini to thank. In a clip shared to X, you can bear witness to the shooter running natively at 30fps on the "smartphone", complete with mouse and keyboard support. Yes, caveats include playing at 240 x 320 pixels on a very blue 2.6-inch TFT display, but that's still a mean feat, seeing as the phone boasts a 332 MHz ARM chip and just 64MB RAM.
Half-Life 1 on the Nokia N95 finally reached 30 FPS! Some slowdowns remain, but I've already identified the cause and am working on a fix. Mouse and keyboard support has also been added. Still a few bugs to fix, but it's getting there.#HalfLife #nokia #symbian #valve #steam pic.twitter.com/PDlq2CRxAyJune 5, 2026
The secret sauce here is Xash3D FWGS, an open source engine designed to run Half-Life on things that, well, aren't a gaming PC. Leoncini has a to-do list of improvements going on their blog, which includes adding LAN and online multiplayer support as well as smoothing out bugs and crashes. The developer also confesses that they haven't played through the entire campaign yet on the 2000s Symbian-based phone, but says it runs reasonably well aside from some performance quirks and RAM-related crashes on specific maps.
Naturally, seeing one of the best PC games of all time running on an old Nokia is pretty rad. Despite holding on to plenty of old phones from 20 years ago, I sadly don't have an N95, but I do have its younger sibling, the Nokia N8, from 2010. It uses Symbian^3, so I won't be able to use the exact approach above, but the developer says you can compile the code for the OS (that's my weekend plans sorted).
Admittedly, there are probably more mind-boggling ports of PC games running on the wrong devices out there. As far as '90s shooters go, Half-Life runs pretty smoothly on even my Voodoo Banshee APG card, albeit using OpenGL and lower settings. What running Valve's FPS does highlight, though, is that we could get official ports of Gordon Freeman's first crowbar-swinging romp on pretty low-spec ARM handhelds, like the wonderful Super Pocket or its beefier Evercade siblings.
Yes, trying to play Half-Life with just a d-pad would be pretty clunky, but Blaze is set to release its Evercade Nexus retro handheld this October. The portable aims to properly dip its toes into the realm of early 3D gaming with dual analogue sticks and enhanced specs, and while PS1 and Sega Saturn games will likely dominate its library, there's a case to be made for a new Orange Box collection with Valve's debut game and maybe even its sequel and a bit of Portal for good measure.
Okay, I'm getting ahead of myself, and Valve would probably rather keep its first-party games as a reason to use its storefront or buy a Steam Deck OLED now that it costs over $700. My point is that if developers can get '90s PC games working on janky old 2000s cellphones, then publishers should look to get their classics on more devices that will fit in your pocket.
Already got Valve's handheld? Swing by the best Steam Deck docks and best Steam Deck accessories to enhance your setup.
