It's no secret that there are a handful of excellent NES emulators to choose from to fuel your retro gaming needs but I guarantee you've never seen one quite like this.

As the name implies, the 3DNes emulator was written to take traditional 2D sprites and convert them into 3D. It's an ambitious undertaking that has a long way to go on the path of perfection (it's in beta right now) but the early results are certainly promising - more so in some games than others.

In the video above, you can see the effect at its finest in Mega Man, Castlevania and certain sections of Super Mario Bros. 3 (warp pipes and question mark blocks, for example, look great). More complex games like Contra, however, reveal the emulator's shortcomings.

It's worth reiterating that this is a global conversion happening on-the-fly versus rewriting the entire game from the ground up as a 3D title. Given more time to tweak the algorithm and maybe even tweak individual games will no doubt improve results exponentially.

The good news is that you can give the emulator a try for yourself right now. Rather than download an executable, 3DNes is currently offered as a web app and is only compatible with Mozilla's Firefox browser. Engadget says the current version is pretty unstable so don't be surprised if gameplay isn't exactly smooth sailing.