NESBot: Tool Assisted Speedrun On Real Hardware

Xistic writes "For many years tool assisted speedruns were purely theoretical and the domain of emulators. No longer! Using an Arduino Duemilanove microcontroller to drive an actual Nintendo console, pjgat09 plays back prerecorded input to beat Super Mario Bros. in record time. The selection of possible games is limited: 'If the game relies on any uninitialized memory for randomness, or if it is heavily based on console timing, it may not work. In the case of Super Mario Bros however, as long as the button presses start play back at the right time, the movie will play back correctly.' The author includes complete instructions on how to setup the device."

Machine replaces man

[Anonymous Coward]

Great. All it needs to do now is develop an ego and look down on people who just want to have fun with their games, and this device can replace every speedrunner on the internet. Another job lost to machines...

Hitboxes

[tepples]

Sure looks like he's going through the flesh-eating flowers and the rotating balls to me

Hitboxes for most enemies in SMB1 are only half as tall as small Mario.

Uninitialized memory for randomness

[Anonymous Coward]

Uninitialized memory is not random, and relying on it to produce randomness is very bad.
Interestingly I once saw this in some C code:

static int c; /* leave uninitialized to make as random as possible */