3DSen is a NES emulator project that has been in development for 10 years. It’s finally received its first official 1.0 release, meaning you can now play classic NES titles in real 3D. These aren’t just old games with some graphical tricks layered over them; these are painstakingly reimagined games.
How Can 2D NES Games Be Made 3D?
Traditional emulation is an important part of preserving gaming culture, but it’s pretty simple overall. It’s just converting games from their original form to one that is playable on another platform. For instance, if you emulate a Pokémon Game Boy title on a PC, it’s still the exact same game, it’s just made playable on your PC. But 3DSen is not a NES emulator in that sense; each title that is compatible with 3DSen had to be manually modified and rebuilt to support true 3D environments.
This is more than just using certain graphical effects to make the “appearance” of something 3D. 3DSen doesn’t use tricks like transposed layers or parallax to make the games look 3D. The games themselves have actually had real 3D environments constructed within them out of the 2D sprites that were always part of the original.
This means all of those classic 2D games actually have environments you can navigate like a box, rotating them around and seeing every angle of the levels and your characters.
3DSen’s Features and Limitations
As stated previously, each game that 3DSen can emulate in this new 3D manner had to be manually calibrated and modified. Unfortunately, this means that the current library of playable NES games is fairly sparse. Of the 1376 official NES titles ever made, 3DSen currently only supports a little over 100 titles. That said, it does support many top classics, including The Legend of Zelda, Super Mario Bros., Final Fantasy, Megaman, and Castlevania.
Now, be aware that 3DSen is an emulation tool and doesn’t come loaded with any of these games. As with all emulation, you’re legally required to own digital copies of the games you want to play, and you’ll need a way to convert those games into readable ROMs that the emulator can utilize. Ultimately, all you need is a ROM of the game you want to play, but the legal concerns around acquiring them remains a topic of debate.
But assuming you have ROMs of the NES titles you want to play, it’s easy enough to load them up into 3DSen, launching into a brand-new retro experience in mere minutes. Just make sure you check game compatibility with the emulator before you buy it. There are two versions of 3DSen you can buy; a regular version for PC flatscreens and one that supports VR. The regular version costs $15, while the VR version costs $25. Though of course, you’ll need a good VR headset to enjoy that version.
Of course, a modern emulator needs more than just 3D dioramas of old 2D games, even if that is pretty awesome for retro enthusiasts. Thankfully, 3DSen comes with a host of other useful features: animated skyboxes, real-time lighting and shadows, motion gesture support, rewind and fast-forward, customizable cameras, 3D file exports, custom game cover art, and a lot more. These features combined have really breathed some fresh life into the NES scene, giving retro lovers a brand-new way to experience the classics.
Current reviews on Steam are very positive, with lots of gamers highlighting the tilting and zooming features of the 3D camera, which can really transform how these classics feel to play. Granted, some titles don’t benefit from this special emulation too much; games like Tetris and NES Pinball don’t gain much from being 3D. But being able to actually look down pipes in Super Mario 3 or actually see enemies crawling over 3D cave walls in Metroid is a surreal experience.
Even just the screen tilting of the camera can make a game feel like a totally different experience. You can play Pac-Man on a tilted field with 3D walls, or move the camera in Jackal so it’s almost an over-the-shoulder perspective game instead of a top-down one. If you really love retro NES games and still go back to play them occasionally, I can personally attest that $15 is worth the ability to play your favorites in such a new and interesting way.
For now, the biggest complaint I have with 3DSen is the limited number of games it supports. It kind of stinks if your favorite isn’t supported (the emulator can still play the game in its usual 2D form, but that misses the point, doesn’t it?). But the emulator is being updated with new compatible titles in the future. After all, this is only version 1.0 of its official release, so this isn’t its final form. More popular NES titles are likely to be added in the future.
Retro game emulation has always been beloved, but it’s always been kind of stagnant as well. 3DSen is really one of the most innovative things to happen to NES emulation in a long time, and I can’t help but wonder if we might get a SNES emulator that can do the same thing at some point in the future. As these games get ever older, the introduction of increasingly interesting ways to play them is needed to keep them alive in gamers’ hearts.