Half-Life now runs on a 2007 Nokia N95 at 30 FPS with Bluetooth mouse support

Doom usually gets all the glory when it comes to unusual ports, but Argentine developer Dante Leoncini has just made a strong case for Half-Life. He has successfully ported Valve's 1998 shooter to a Nokia N95, a 2007 slider phone running the long-defunct Symbian OS, and it runs at around 30 FPS with full Bluetooth mouse and keyboard support.

The port is built on Xash3D FWGS, an open-source engine designed to make the original Half-Life compatible with modern and not-so-modern platforms beyond the PC. Leoncini handled the Symbian-specific work himself, building a native port rather than relying on emulation. The result runs on a 240x320 screen, which is admittedly tiny, but the single-player campaign is working, including sound, weapons, and dedicated server creation.

The hardware gap between the Nokia N95 and a late-90s gaming PC is smaller than you might expect. The N95 packs a dual ARM11 CPU running at 332 MHz and 128 MB of RAM in its 8GB model. Half-Life's original PC requirements called for a 133MHz Pentium and 24MB of RAM, meaning the phone actually clears those specs comfortably. What it is missing is a dedicated graphics card, but Leoncini has made it work regardless.

Bluetooth mouse and keyboard support is a genuine highlight. The N95 uses Bluetooth 2.0, which introduces a small amount of latency, but players can technically run through Gordon Freeman's debut adventure without wrestling with the phone's built-in controls. Some slowdowns and crashes still occur on specific maps, largely due to RAM limitations, but Leoncini says he has already identified the causes and is working on fixes.

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The to-do list is still long. LAN and online multiplayer, improved AI behavior, better performance, and more polished graphics are all on the wishlist. Leoncini has not yet played through the entire campaign on the device, but says it runs reasonably well for where the port currently stands.

For anyone curious enough to try it, the engine files and installation guides are available on Leoncini's website and GitHub. You will need a copy of the original game files and a Nokia N95 gathering dust somewhere.