Introduction
Recently, I wondered if it was possible to play my Android games from Google Play on my PC. Let’s face it, I wanted to play GTA: Vice City and San Andreas. 🙂 After some research I found BlueStacks. BlueStacks is an Android Emulator that has been around for a while. Here’s a quick tutorial on how to get it up and running.
Download BlueStacks
Go to https://www.bluestacks.com/ and find the Download BlueStacks Button.
Once it has finished downloading open it up in file explorer and double click the file to start the installation.
Installation
Installation is straight forward. Click Install Now to get going.
The software will need to download some files, just be patient. Once it has finished installation, go ahead and start up BlueStacks. You’ll get a message to sign in to your Google Play account, don’t have to sign in to check out BlueStacks.
You may get a message about hardware virtualization, you can try without it and see how it runs. If you need help, Bluestacks has some info on their website. Here’s a link
Getting Started
Go ahead and sign into your account and click the hamburger icon, then My apps and games.
If you already have games in the play store, choose library. You may have to wait a moment for the list to populate.
If it looks like you need to repurchase, stop and go to Settings, Advanced, and note the name of your Device Profile. Open the google play store, find the app you’d like, and send it to the device listed from the device profile.
Open up the Google Play Store in a browser window and sign in. Click Apps and then My apps.
Find the Game you’d like to install and click on it. Then click where it says Installed.
Choose the device name listed in your settings, choose it in the list.
Now, click install. You’ll get a message that your app will install soon. Go back to BlueStacks and check the Notification bar. You should see this Icon. Open up the pull-down menu to check the status. You should see a notification from the Download Manager.
Once it’s finished downloading, you’ll see the icon on the main menu. Double click to open it.
That’s it! if all goes well you should be able to play. As a side note, you can use this emulated android machine for 2-factor authentication. My main phone recently died and I was able to use this as a 2nd “phone”. Let me know if you’d like to see more on BlueStacks in the comments! Thanks and see you next time!
