Modder injects DLSS 5 into Pac-Man, yielding glitchy arcade visuals
A Russian YouTube channel focused on DLSS 5 experiments used MAME, ReShade, and RenoDX to apply the upscaler to the MS-DOS version of Pac-Man. The four rendering modes produced strange artifacts, including modes that erased a ghost's eyes and removed dots. Because Pac-Man has almost no 3D data for DLSS to work with, the results were mostly distorted, while Duke Nukem reportedly handled the effect better.
A Russian YouTube creator, Valery Kryzhanovsky, tested DLSS 5 on the MS-DOS Pac-Man release. The setup combined MAME emulation with ReShade injection and RenoDX parameter editing. Four modes—Natural, Default, Cinematic, and Denoise—produced distinct glitches; one erased the green ghost's eyes, while another removed maze dots.
The creator noted that 1x multipass often has little effect on older titles, so 4x stacking is used. Pac-Man offers almost no 3D cues, so the upscaler mainly distorted flat sprites. Duke Nukem 1991 reportedly handled the same treatment better because of its metallic surfaces and wall/ceiling occlusion. The 150MB DLSS 5 build remains undertrained and lacks temporal context.
This experiment may mainly interest retro gaming fans, emulator users, and modding communities, who could see it as playful stress-testing rather than practical use. It may also add to broader discussions about AI upscalers producing artifacts when applied outside their intended 3D contexts. For hardware makers and developers, such viral tests could shape expectations around DLSS 5's maturity, training data, and the risks of marketing AI enhancement as broadly applicable.