AI teaches itself to beat Super Mario

A gamer has taught Super Mario to beat itself. Mind. Blown. Source: Supplied

A GAMER and researcher has created a computer program that teaches itself how to play and win Super Mario and other classic NES games.

How it works is a little complex, but in a nutshell, developer Tom Murphy played the game for a number of hours while his computer program recorded every input he made (i.e every time he hit X to jump or Y to fire, the computer would record the controller inputs). Then the computer learned how to replay these inputs to get the same results.

Murphy taught the program to ignore inputs that didn't deliver a positive result or a win.

"I have spent thousands of hours of my life playing NES games, including several complete playthroughs
of classics like Super Mario Bros., Bionic Commando, Bubble Bobble, and other favourites," Murphy wrote in a paper entitled "The first level of Super Mario Bros is easy with Lexicographic ordering and Time Travel... after that it gets a little bit tricky".

"By the year 2013, home computers have become many orders of magnitude faster and more capacious than the NES hardware. This suggested to me that it may be time to automate the playing of NES games, in order to save time."

Murphy said he used a "mathematically relevant and stupid technique that works well."

If all of this is sounding a little too complex, you'd be right. Watch the video above to see how it works in action.

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