Although it is already close to 40 years old, the NES is still one of the favorite consoles for lovers of retro games. This console, developed and marketed by Nintendo, is one of the first that is usually chosen when we are going to launch any old game system. Being such an old console, nowadays it does not hide any mystery when it comes to being able to run its games on a PC, a modern console and even mobile devices. However, there are still projects that may surprise us, such as these two emulators that give a twist to what until now we knew as emulating the NES.
Although you probably know the NES and its game catalog well enough, if you are taking the first steps into retro console emulation, some of the games that you should try without fail are:
- Super Mario Bros 1, 2 and 3
- Tetris
- Dr. Mario
- The legend of zelda
- Punch-Out !!
- Against / Probotector
- Metroid
- Excitebike
- DuckTales
- Mega Man 1, 2 and 3
- Kirby’s Adventure
- Castlevania 1, 2 and 3
- River city ransom
- Zelda II: The Adventure of Link
- Final fantasy
- Kung Fu
- Nintendo World Cup
puNES, everything you can ask an emulator
puNES is an emulator similar to many others that we can find for this console, but whose development has focused, above all, on uniting all the special characteristics of other emulators in a single emulator, the perfect emulator.
This is capable of simulating from the noise screen of the old TVs when you turned them on and there was no signal to all kinds of controls for this platform. It is ready to open ROMs in any format, from 7-Zip, ZIP and RAR to NES, UNF, UNIF, FDS, NSF, NSFE and FM2. Once we have selected the game we want to load, it should open instantly. It allows us to customize the controls to our liking (even with Turbo modes), offers several save points and, in addition, it will allow us to rewind the game in case we comment an error.
It also allows us to activate V-Sync to avoid tears in the game, and even a series of filters that will allow us to improve the appearance of the games.
This emulator is totally free and open source. We can download the latest version of it at no cost from its website . It is available for both Windows and Linux, in 32 and 64 bits.
3DSEN, turn NES games into 3D games
The second of the new emulators for the Nintendo console that we are going to see is 3DSEN. What can a new emulator bring that we have not seen so far? Exactly the 3D. This emulator is characterized above all by automatically converting any 2D NES game into a 3D game by magic. Thanks to this we will be able to play from a new perspective like we have never played before. Even if we have VR glasses, we will be able to play these titles in virtual reality. In total, 79 Nintendo Entertainment System games “ported” to 3D, and the list is constantly growing.
This emulator also offers us very intuitive controls and, of course, different manual save points to continue our games.
This emulator is still in Early Access (in development) and we can buy it on Steam to add it to our library.