MarI/O Can Learn and Play Super Mario World by Itself

Super Mario World is a classic game, one that many have played in one form or another. One person has taken this game to the next level by making a program that can learn to play this game, all by itself.

MarI/O is a program made of neural networks and genetic algorithms that kicks butt at Super Mario World, at least that is the official description of the video. The author was kind enough to provide the source code as well, so you are even able to run this yourself – that is if you want to. The video in itself already shows the important parts of it, but for coders it might be extra interesting. The video has voice over where the author explains how it all works and it is actually quite interesting.

It took about 40 minutes for the algorithm to work out how to beat the level the best way.

Now this automated learning algorithm probably won’t spawn terminators, but rather give us a great view into how we ourselves as humans are built and how it all could be put together. Just at a much smaller and more simplistic level.

The emulator used was the BizHawk emulator with full rerecording support and Lua scripting.