Earlier this year we published a story about the 3DNesVR emulator that lets you run NES games inside VR by converting them to 3D versions of themselves. It’s pretty impressive from a technology perspective and experiencing these games again in VR really changes things.
Since then, the app has undergone more work and now has a free demo available on Steam for anyone to try. The demo is still limited at this time, but does reportedly support:
Super Mario Bros.
Circus Charlie
Elevator Action
Battle City 1990
Donkey Kong
Dr. Mario
Kungfu
Legend of Kage
Tetris (Tengen)
Since this is an emulator, obviously it doesn’t include the ROMs for the games — you’re expected to (legally) provide those on your own. In addition to simply running the games inside VR and converting it to a 3D perspective, the 3DNesVR emulator also provides a VR-focused UI, different render styles, save-states, and motion controller support.
When the full app releases (currently planned for January 2019) it will support “massive games both classic and modern homebrew” natively, but nine titles for a demo is already a great start. Here’s some footage of the creators at Geod Studio playing Metroid with it, for example:
You can find more info and presets over the 3DN Repository here. It’s an ambitious and cool project and seems like the next best thing to Nintendo’s lack of interest in VR. You can try out some other fan-made Mario-focused VR projects as well here and here.
Let us know what you think in the comments down below!
