There is something faintly absurd about taking an 8-bit platformer, a game built from flat tiles because that was all the hardware could manage, and pulling it out into three dimensions. 3dSen has been doing exactly that for years, and its PC version has just had what its developer calls "my biggest overhaul yet".
Geod Studio announced 3dSen PC 2.0 on Steam News on 29 October. GamingOnLinux picked it up on 3 November, describing an emulator that turns NES games into 3D voxel dioramas and calling the changes huge.
A bit of history first
This is not a weekend project that got lucky. In the 1.0 announcement on the same Steam news feed, from June 2025, Geod Studio's Truc wrote that 3dSen had taken over 10 years of solo development before leaving Early Access, and that it shipped with 100 handcrafted built-in profiles for NES games. A profile is the reconstruction itself: the work of turning one game's 2D sprites into a 3D scene. Players can also make and share their own with the 3dSenMaker tool, according to that post.
What 2.0 changes
The most visible change is the front door. According to Geod Studio's notes, the library now has list and grid views with cover art, search, filters and favourites, and the whole interface can be driven with a gamepad, with an on-screen keyboard for search. Reopen the app and it now asks whether to Continue your previous game or Discard it and start fresh.
The visuals get two upgrades. An enhanced visual style lets you adjust reflections, shading, pixel shadows, voxel grooves and world curvature. Geod Studio notes these effects start switched off, so you turn on the ones you like in Settings > Visual Effects, with a live preview of the paused game. The Classic style is still available.
The second is a new Retina render mode, which the developer describes as a whole new way of sub-voxel modelling: instead of building every pixel as a block, it sculpts smooth, rounded surfaces that cut through the voxels. It sits under Settings > Display > Render Mode. Anti-aliasing is now selectable at Off, 2x or 4x, with 2x the default.
For anyone who cares about feel, Run Ahead is now on by default to reduce input delay. There is a Soft Reset that restarts a game as if you had pressed Reset on the original console, and you can drag with the right mouse button to turn the camera.
Fixes and platforms
Geod Studio lists fixes for thin cracks, dark dots and dark lines between 3D tiles, fewer stutters when loading, settings that survive an abrupt close, and a camera that no longer spins when you zoom in. The Super Mario Bros., Punch-Out!! and Final Fantasy profiles get fixes too.
Under the bonnet, the Windows build moves from 32-bit to 64-bit, and the macOS version now runs natively on both Apple Silicon and Intel Macs. On Steam Deck, the developer says the native Linux version runs a lot better and is now recommended over the Windows version through Proton; you switch by choosing Steam Linux Runtime in the game's Compatibility properties. GamingOnLinux likewise recommends the native Linux version on Steam Deck.
If you have played before
The old menu has been retired, with everything it did moved into the new one. There is also a new default controller layout, with Y and B for Select and Start and LB and RB for Rewind and Fast Forward. Geod Studio says your saved layout is kept, so to switch you need to go to Settings > Controls and press Reset to defaults.
Ollie's take: The Retina mode is the interesting bit for me. 3dSen's charm has always been the blockiness, the sense of a sprite being extruded rather than remade, and a mode that rounds those edges off is a genuinely different reading of the same old pixels. Sensibly, Geod Studio keeps the Classic style around for anyone who likes their NES square.
Reporting notes
