A long-dormant project to create a wireless Bluetooth adapter for the Saturn 3D controller is alive once again, according to a blog post from its creator.

Dave, the owner of retro game accessory shop Humble Bazooka , wrote March 7 that the adapter is “the first project back on the bench” after putting new product development on hold last year.

Trying something new – Dev logs.I wrote about the current state of #BLEShift 3D, plus NES BT and SNES BT development after a long pause.I hope to keep up with this as projects move forward!www.humblebazooka.com/2026/03/07/b…

“This one took a longer break than I planned,” he wrote. “During testing I discovered a bug in the original soft-latching power button circuit. It wasn’t catastrophic or a safety issue, but it was the kind of edge case that would eventually show up and annoy someone. Rather than ship something I wasn’t happy with, I paused and reworked the design until I had the time to really fix the problem.”

Dave said the issues he found while testing the adapter, which he calls the BLE Shift 3D, have been resolved and the device is testing well.

“At this point I’m mostly adding polish — cleaning up firmware behavior, tightening battery life, and making sure everything feels like production ready device,” he wrote in his blog.

He’s still trying to decide whether to use a 3D printed enclosure or an injection-molded one, though. Injection molding would push the release back but give it “a more professional look and feel,” he said, while 3D printing “works well and lets me produce small batches quickly.”

Dave told SHIRO! today that injection molding can take three to four months “but can be longer depending on complexity.”

He put the choice up to his customers and asked for feedback. That feedback can be given on Humble Bazooka’s Bluesky , X/Twitter , Youtube or Facebook accounts.

As for the battery life, Dave told SHIRO! today that the final amount is still in flux. “I’ve spent a good amount of time working around battery life and I’m shooting for 6+ [hours],” he said. “My current prototype is getting like 7-8 [hours] but I don’t want to quote that until the final adapter is ready. With that said, TBA.”

Plans derailed

The last time SHIRO! reported on Dave’s adapter was in October 2024. At the time, Dave said the design was 90 to 95% finished.

“What’s left is basically fine tuning, testing and manufacturing,” he told SHIRO! at the time. “It’s hard to estimate a release date at the moment but I’d like to have it shipped to resellers by the end of Q1 2025.”

Things clearly didn’t go to plan. Tariffs enacted in 2025 hit the U.S.-based Humble Bazooka hard. “Component prices kept climbing, shipping costs went up, and the new U.S. tariffs didn’t help either,” Dave wrote in his blog earlier this month.

He said he also moved his workshop to a new location, which meant tearing down the whole workspace and setting it up again from scratch. All those headwinds resulted in development and restocks being “basically on hold for months.”

But things are getting back to normal for him. With his workshop set back up and new parts arriving, Dave is getting back to project development, too.

The BLE Shift 3D in particular is a project he’s been developing for a long time. It began in 2022 when Dave forked off a project started by Drew Kenaz , aka GamingNJncos. After spending that year enduring lots of trial and error with game compatibility, Dave put the BLE Shift 3D on the backburner to focus on other projects as well as his full-time job.

When he returned to the Saturn adapter in 2024, he called it “a really good thing because I was able to look at the whole project with fresh eyes.” He said he planned out its features, branding and design.

“I threw out a ton of my original code and refactored what was left,” he told SHIRO! at the time. “I designed an efficient power circuit that not only toggles the adapter on and off with a single tactile button but also completely shuts off the ESP32 so it won’t draw power when it’s off. I reworked my sleep system so if you leave the device alone for two minutes, it completely shuts off, extending the battery life when the adapter is sitting around.”

Humble Bazooka’s other Saturn products

This isn’t the first wireless Bluetooth adapter Dave’s made for the Saturn. He released the Saturn BT in August 2023 , which allows modern Bluetooth controllers to be used with original Saturn hardware. It uses the  BlueRetro  platform coded by Jacques Gagnon, aka Darthcloud.

SHIRO!’s own SaturnDave got an early hands-on with the device before it went on sale and put it through its paces.

“I admit it. I did NOT expect this receiver to perform as well as it does,” SaturnDave said in his review. “This Saturn BT adapter basically feels like using a 2.4Ghz receiver, when paired with a reasonably modern Bluetooth controller.”

The Humble Bazooka shop also sells a replacement battery door for the Saturn.

	Danthrax
		Danthrax is a member of the SHIRO! Media Group, writing stories for the website when Saturn news breaks and helping to manage the group's social media accounts. While he was a Sega Genesis kid in the '90s, he didn't get a Saturn until 2018. It didn't take him long to fall in love with the console's library as well as the fan translation and homebrew scene. He contributed heavily to the Bulk Slash and Stellar Assault SS fan localizations, and he's helped as an editor on several other Saturn and Dreamcast fan projects such as Cotton 2, Rainbow Cotton and Sakura Wars Columns 2.