A fan-made Pokémon Snap project has turned the Nintendo 64 photography game into a playable Nintendo 3DS release, with an early beta now available through the project's community thread.
The unofficial port, led by modder Manurocker95, recreates Pokémon Snap in Unity for the 3DS family. Its current build is designed especially for New Nintendo 3DS hardware and adds support for touch controls, gyroscope aiming, amiibo and the handheld's stereoscopic 3D display.
Pokémon Snap 3DS is more than a straight conversion
The PokéCommunity release thread describes Pokémon Snap 3DS as a from-scratch recreation inspired by the N64 original, not an official Nintendo release. The beta includes the Beach course and the developer says the full project is planned to feature new routes and more Pokémon than the 1999 game.
That puts the project in a slightly different space from a simple homebrew port. It keeps the familiar setup of taking photos from the ZERO-ONE vehicle while travelling through fixed courses, but adapts the camera game around 3DS hardware features and the handheld's dual-screen layout.
The beta is localized in Castilian Spanish, English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese and Japanese, with language selection available from the title screen. The developer also lists a credits scene covering resources and contributors used during development.
New 3DS mode is recommended
Although the project targets Nintendo 3DS hardware, Manurocker95 says it can also run on Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, iOS, Wii U, PlayStation Vita and Nintendo Switch, alongside real hardware and emulators such as Citra and Azahar.
There is an important caveat for anyone trying it through emulation. The developer says players should enable New 3DS mode in emulator settings, and a follow-up reply in the thread notes that Old 3DS hardware can run into random crashes.
A YouTube performance test from Manuel Rodríguez Matesanz shows Pokémon Snap 3DS beta v0.3.0 running, while a second short video demonstrates gyro support. Those videos are useful previews of the project, but the public beta remains an unofficial fan release rather than a Nintendo-backed revival.
The original Pokémon Snap launched for Nintendo 64 in 1999 and later received an official modern follow-up with New Pokémon Snap on Nintendo Switch in 2021. This 3DS project is much smaller in scope than an official sequel, but it gives longtime fans a curious new way to revisit Pokémon photography on hardware Nintendo never brought the original game to.