Ars got exclusive access to the near-final version of that standalone emulator earlier this month. Our time testing 3DNES reveals a promising new direction for classic game emulation, but there are still a bunch of rough edges.

As with the beta, the core of the full version of 3DNES is an automatic shape detection algorithm that tries to group individual NES sprite and background tiles together into coherent groupings on the fly. The algorithm then converts those shapes into basic 3D objects (generally a series of cubes or cylinders) and tries to determine how those 3D models should sit in the scene as far as depth and thickness are concerned.

For many basic 2D titles like Super Mario Bros. or Tetris, this process works nearly flawlessly without any additional human input. Formerly flat 2D scenes end up looking like a living diorama made of tiny building blocks, and you can rotate or zoom around scenes for interesting new perspectives on the games (we especially like the effect of looking up at falling Tetris blocks appearing in the distance). Some characters and objects may look a little lumpy and misshapen in their new 3D forms, but overall, the shape detection and conversion is better than we had any right to expect.

When the algorithm isn't enough, though, 3DNES now allows players to manually edit the 3D effects on a scene-by-scene basis. Clicking anywhere in the 3DNES screen pauses the game and lets you adjust the 3D characteristics of a particular shape. You can move objects from the foreground layer to the background, adjust their thickness and scale, and even change the basic 3D shape being rendered (a lot of objects look much better as cylinders than as cubes, for instance).

On the plus side, the algorithm learns from your settings, so adjusting one enemy or background object will tend to have a cascading effect on the same cookie-cutter sprites found elsewhere in the game. And once you've made your 3D adjustments, you can save them to a file to automatically be used every time you load that ROM.

Still, making these kinds of edits manually can be a painstaking process, often requiring frame-by-frame advancement to catch objects that may look odd as they animate. Games like Super C are practically unplayable without heavy editing of almost every background object, and titles like Castlevania or Chip and Dale's Rescue Rangers can look pretty bad without heavy manual editing.

















Most 2D games can be made to look acceptable with enough work. That's not always the case for NES games that already tried to force a pseudo-3D perspective on the original hardware, though. In games like Super Dodge Ball or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: The Arcade Game, characters end up floating awkwardly above a flat background, casting odd shadows as they slide up and down the screen.

The algorithm isn't smart enough to create a sloping floor that gradually comes out of the screen as the player moves "down" these pseudo-3D perspectives. The emulator isn't functional enough to even allow for this kind of 3D to be manually coded by the player, either. And in other isometric-style titles like R.C Pro-Am, sprites and menu objects get mangled and misplaced enough to make the game practically unplayable regardless of manual editing.

We're glad to see a new classic game emulator that makes an effort to do more than just baseline replication of the old games we know and love. Even at its best, though, 3DNES' effects feel more like a visual gimmick than a really transformative way of playing old games. At $30, we'd also expect the emulator to include more in the way of basic emulation functions like savestates, rewinding, and maybe even input recording (though it's worth noting that the controller support seems to work perfectly).

As it stands, 3DNES is a fun toy for emulation aficionados, but it's not the kind of tool that will breathe much new, long-lasting life into your tired old NES library. Buy it only if you're interested in tinkering with the current state of 2D-to-3D conversions technology.