Computer Script Is Really Good At Playing Mario

What do you do if you really want to sit down and play some Mario, but you just don’t have the time – or the mad skillz? Apparently, you write an AI program to play the game for you.

It’s sort of depressing to think that this Mario-playing bot is much better at the game than I ever could be. It’s also really cool to see how it adapts on the fly, calculating all the possible trajectories and following one with (literally) inhuman reaction time and precision.

Created by AI programmer Robin Baumgarten, this is an entry for the Mario AI Competition – so presumably, this means there are going to be even more Mario-playing bots around by the time all is said and done.

Theoretically, if you paired this program with an automatic Mario level generator, then wouldn’t it go forever? It’d be like putting a Slinky on an escalator…

(Via Joystiq)