OVERBlack, Criterion's 2006 Xbox shooter, gets a native Android port, now at v1.6.0
Black, the explosive 2006 first-person shooter from Burnout studio Criterion, now runs natively on Android. Black for Android, by developer RanggaCasper, takes the original Xbox version's x86 code, statically recompiles it ahead of time to C++ with XboxXBE-Recomp, and builds it for arm64. Graphics go through Vulkan, and windowing, input and audio through SDL3, so there's no emulator in the chain. It's the same developer and toolchain behind the Shaolin Monks Android port already in our directory. Version 1.6.0 came out on October 22, two days after 1.5.0.What it does
The left side of the screen is a movement stick and dragging on the right turns the view, with on-screen buttons for fire, aim, reload, grenades, crouch, weapon switching and the suppressor. You can also aim with the gyroscope, or plug in a controller or a mouse and keyboard. The graphics page lets you set the render resolution from 20% to 200% of the screen's height (instead of the original 640x480), push the field of view from 45 to 140 degrees, raise draw distance up to 8x, and drop the Xbox's 30 fps cap for an unlimited or custom frame rate. The developer's gameplay video shows it on a POCO F6 at max settings with gyro aim.
New in 1.6.0
- HDR and anti-aliasing options, plus switches for bloom and fog, on the graphics page.
- Xbox-style and clean button skins for the touch controls.
- Cheats moved into a panel opened by a touch button, and a new cheat that allows any weapon in any level (a first contribution from datfooldive).
- The app now finds a Black folder on the SD card through Android's storage volumes.
- An Enter button in menus, Credits on the title menu, and fixes for menu pages and the options screen after the credits.
What you need
An arm64 device on Android 10 or newer with a Vulkan 1.1 GPU, and the files from your own copy of Black: the USA or Europe release, as an .iso disc image or as default.xbe with its data folders. Install the APK, allow all-files access, and copy the game into a Black folder at the top of your phone's storage or SD card; the app starts the game as soon as it finds the files. The project includes no game assets, and Overclocked doesn't host or link game files.
Download it from the project's GitHub releases. Black for Android is now in the Overclocked ports directory, along with two other additions today: Chupathingy, a second open-source Halo: Combat Evolved decomp port with an Android build, and james2doyle's Final Fantasy Tactics Advance Recomp, which just added battle haptics on Android. Both need your own copy of the game.