u/456defin r/compsci • Recommends
Computer program that learns to play classic NES games
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Computer program that learns to play classic NES games
suckerpinch
202K subscribers • 15 videos on Hallway
- Recommended by 11 people: 9 on Hacker News, 1 on Lobsters and 1 in engineering communities.
- A classic. People kept recommending it from 2013 to 2025.
- Presented by Tom7
- May be out of date. Uploaded 13 years ago, in an area where tools change fast.
Intermediate. Assumes working knowledge.
2.2M views13 years ago11 recommendations
AI and machine learningGame developmentClassic machine learningRetro games and consolesAlgorithms
Tom7 explains and demonstrates his LearnFun and PlayFun software which automatically learns to play NES games by analyzing memory.
This is an explanation and demo of software I wrote that learns how to play a Nintendo Entertainment System game and then automatically plays it. This is real. Research paper published in SIGBOVIK 2013: "The first level of Super Mario Bros. is easy with lexicographic ordering a and time travel ...after that it gets a little tricky." tom7.org/mario/mario.pdf Follow-up video with more games: youtube.com/watch?v=YGJHR9Ovszs And episode 3: youtube.com/watch?v=Q-WgQcnessA For more info and source code, see: tom7.org/mario/Why it's here
11 people recommend thisWhat people say. Highly recommended as a classic, entertaining, and brilliant demonstration of early game-playing AI and memory analysis.
Moments people linked to
learc83on Hacker News • Recommends
On “A C89 compiler that produces executables that are also valid ASCII text files [pdf]”
Thanks for pointing that out. I wouldn't have noticed who that was otherwise. His video on learnfun/playfun is both hilarious and amazing. link to this video
fartcannonon Hacker News • Recommends
On “Medical chatbot using OpenAI’s GPT-3 told a fake patient to kill themselves”
There was an AI created the absolutely brilliant Tom7 on on his YouTube channel 'SuckerPinch' on April 1, 2013 that paused a game of Tetris instead of losing. In my opinion, Tom doesn't get enough credit for his work. He released his AI a full 8+ months before DeepMind released their Atari playing AI. Watch the whole thing, it's delightful. The AI pauses Tetris right before it loses at around 16mins into the video. link to this video I also recommend his other videos. Brilliant guy. Edit: Here's the paper link
reconditeon Hacker News • Recommends
On “SIGBOVIK 2015 Proceedings [pdf]”
Haha, I love it. There was a SIGBOVIK submission a couple years ago that looked at byte patterns within video game RAM (specifically NES) to automate the playing of. Pretty entertaining stuff. link to this video
fixermarkon Hacker News • Recommends
On “Automatic 3Dification of Nintendo Games: The GlEnd() of Zelda”
Tom 7's work on machine learning and NES emulation is very impressive. This isn't the first time he's attacked that space; you can see previous experiences he had with an automatic game-playing AI he built called "LearnFun / PlayFun" on that YouTube channel also: link to this video link link
tomjakubowskion Hacker News • Recommends
On “Autonomous Mini Rally Car Teaches Itself to Powerslide”
If you're interested in a "dumber" approach to machines "learning" to play classic video games (including Super Mario Bros), tom7's video 1 and paper 2 on Playfun are both fascinating. 1 link to this video 2 link
d33on Hacker News • Recommends
On “Deep Reinforcement Learning: Pong from Pixels”
In the context of AI and gaming, I definitely recommend this series of three youtube videos: link to this video Some games are played better than human would.
onlion Hacker News • Recommends
On “The glEnd of Zelda(): Automatic 3Dification of NES Games (2016)”
You should look at some other things the author did. They fit in the same area of craziness, and are absolutely great. For example link , Portmantout: A portmanteau of every English word, or the first one, link to this video , Computer program that learns to play classic NES games. I also liked the humor in What, if anything, is epsilon?, link .
onlion Hacker News • Recommends
On “Reverse-emulating the NES”
I'm not sure many people can pull this off. The author here was also great in his presentation about automated NES playing, link to this video . You don't see often academics & hacker work that is also combined with the right amount of humor. He even 3Dified the original Zelda!
dan_quixoteon Hacker News • Recommends
On “MAR1D: First-Person Mario”
tom7 is awesome. He made an awesome and hilarious video years ago about his SIGBOVIK paper/research on AI playing NES: link to this video
rdlwon Hacker News • Recommends
On “AI-designed chips are so weird that 'humans cannot understand them'”
Not quite what you're describing, but no one has yet linked the classic Tom7 series where he applies deep learning to classic NES games: link to this video
u/Wahw11in r/compsci • Mentions
A.I. Playing NES games does surprisingly well and terribly bad.
link to this video
This guy created an algorithm for an A.I. to play different NES games. The program did really well playing games like Super Mario Brothers and "Hudson's Adventure Island". But it did really bad playing Tetris and Pac-Man. What really caught my eye, was that when the program was just about to lose a Tetris game, it paused. Forever. The only way to not lose, would be to not play the game. Which if you think about it, it's true, and kind of creepy. I thought it was hard to believe that the program did that. Incredible experiment that I wanted to share.
u/SRS_IS_GODin r/compsci • Mentions
On “I'm watching Cosmos on Netflix right now, and am thinking, damn it would be awesome if there was something like this for Comp Sci to share with my non Comp Sci friends”
This is a good start: link to this video
u/nxlydin r/compsci • Mentions
On “Computer program that learns to play classic NES games”
Oh god, those Pac Man skills at 14:15
u/SigmaSafooin r/compsci • Mentions
On “The First Level of Super Mario Bros. is Easy with Lexicographic Orderings and Time Travel... after that it gets a little tricky.”
I love the algorithm's ability to exploit bugs. Example here and another here. Well, the first one in the last link (pacman) isn't really a bug, but hell if I can ever do that.