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An emulator that converts NES games into full 3D is now on Steam
Emulators have finally arrived on Steam - and they’ve landed on Valve’s storefront with a bang. This week, developers Geod Studios brought their long-running NES emulator3DSen PCto Steam. The twist? This virtual console turns old-school pixel pushers - whether they’re modern homebrew throwbacks or legitimately-acquired Marios - into adorable, fully-playable 3D dioramas.
It’ll work well enough for a demonstration, but 3DSen’s store page reckons the following trailer “doesn’t do it justice”. Have a little confidence, eh?
Watch on YouTube
Watch on YouTube
Over the past five years, developers Geod have been bashing away at their somewhat unique emulator. Not content with simply getting games running on virtual NES hardware, 3DSen PC extrudes a whole third dimension from any given game - whether it’s a console classic from back in the day, or a more modern homebrew attempt.
‘Course, it’ll pay to see how long 3DSen remains on Steam as a paid product. Nintendo are notoriously touchy over emulation,shutting down that neat Super Mario 64 PC portonly last month. Emulators aren’t illegal, but they’re also rarely sold in such a professional manner - and while the devs are careful not to feature officially licensed SNES games in their trailers, this is very much still an avenue one could use to play their ill-gotten Marios outside of Ninty’s ecosystem.
But emulation on Steam is about to become a whole lot more commonplace, it seems. While 3DSen beat it to the punch, Libretro this week listed their open-source emulator front-end RetroArch onSteam- bringing support for a whole range of ancient console and handheld emulation to the platform later this year.
3DSen PC is available onSteam Early Accessfor £6.47/€7.37/$8.99. If you like your pixels strapped to your face, there’s also a VR edition onSteamgoing for the slightly higher price of £15.49/€16.79/$19.99.
