Some of your favorite classic Nintendo games just got an upgrade, thanks to a new emulator that converts those titles' graphics from their old 2D to 3D.
The 3DNES emulator breathes new life into old games, such as Super Mario Bros., by taking their flat perspectives and giving them more of a 3D look.
Although Nintendo has released some of its older games as part of its "3D classics" line, many titles still got left permanently in the past. However, this new emulator hopes to convert more of those older and forgotten games into 3D.
The emulator is the work of a Vietnamese developer, Trần Vũ Trúc, who used an algorithm that studies the environments of 2D games in the cloud and then separates flat backgrounds into objects with three dimensions. For example, flat round circles become spheres and tubes that have actual sides and shadows that are seen depending on the camera angle.
So far, the best-looking game with the 3DNES emulator is Super Mario Bros, perhaps because it has a simple background that makes it easy to convert the game into 3D. Other games don't look quite as good, such as Castlevania, because they have more complex backgrounds. However, Trúc hopes to improve upon the work done so far.
"If the emulator can render decently [even one tenth of] NES game collection, it's already a big success for me," Trúc wrote on the TASVideos message board.
The emulator does have its limits, at least right now: because it is browser-based, it only works in Firefox, although Trúc promises that a downloadable Windows version will arrive in the future. The emulator also just doesn't really work all that well because it uses the Unity player, which just isn't good. That, too, is something Trúc plans on fixing. For such an ambitious project, though, one thing is certain: it's still really cool that someone designed a way to turn old flat 2D games into 3D worlds.
For those who just want to see the 3D rendering in action, Trúc's development company, Geod, has a YouTube channel with videos of what games look like after getting run through the 3DNES emulator.
