suckerpinch
9 HN recommenders · recommended in 18 months, 2015–2025
16:18 · 2.2M views · Apr 2, 2013
Tom7 explains and demos software that learns to play NES games by finding score patterns in memory and then searching for inputs that raise it. It is the video companion to his SIGBOVIK paper.
Loved on HN as a hilarious, brilliant example of hacker-academic work and cited whenever game-playing AI or fuzzing comes up.
19 comments from Hacker News
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. this video I also recommend his other videos. Brilliant guy. Edit: Here's the paper [LINK]
Thanks for pointing that out. I wouldn't have noticed who that was otherwise. His video on learnfun/playfun is both hilarious and amazing. this video
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, this video , Computer program that learns to play classic NES games. I also liked the humor in What, if anything, is epsilon?, [LINK] .
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: this video [LINK] [LINK]
I'm not sure many people can pull this off. The author here was also great in his presentation about automated NES playing, 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!