https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEc3lem7jPE
The things video game speedrunners do can be pretty amazing, but in the end they’re still confined by the limitations of their fleshy, human fingers. But what if you taught a robot to play video games? That would result in some truly mind blowing speedruns. For example, the current human speedrun record for Super Mario Bros. 3 is three minutes, eight seconds, but somebody has trained a robot to beat the game in a mere two seconds. Yes, two seconds.
The record as achieved by the TASbot, a version of Nintendo’s classic R.O.B. that has been modified to play old video games. Yup, Nintendo’s games are being bested by its own creation – how deliciously ironic. Basically, Redditor/speedrunner Ais523 discovered that mashing buttons very quickly at the beginning of many NES games (like, around 6,000 times per minute) will mess with the code, and let you do strange things. Like jump directly to the end of the game. So, several speedrunners got together, programmed TASbot to bash the hell out of the NES’ buttons in just the right way, and sure enough, the little plastic guy got to the end of Super Mario Bros. 3 in less time than it takes to say the game’s name.
So now I feel even worse about never finishing Mario 3. Those airships and tanks are just really hard, okay?
via Kotaku