NESBot - NES playing robot beating Super Mario Bros.

[@benq7593]

Now our controllers are better at the games than we are.

[@Barnacules]

I'm guessing since the bot has no input from the screen or programming it's literally just playing back a scripted speed run previously recorded, correct?

[@TorutheRedFox]

+Barnacules Nerdgasm Maybe.

[@burntsn0w]

+Barnacules Nerdgasm i dont think so....... but you may be right

[@pjgat09]

+Barnacules Nerdgasm Yes, this is playing back what is called a Tool Assisted Speedrun. The button presses were recorded in an emulator and tweaked until they were perfect. My bot just plays back that script of buttons on the real console.

[@riivulet]

It wasn't previously recorded footage, that was live, but the moves were scripted in an emulator with tools beforehand.

[@ZeixGames]

and darbian break the record , and he is a human haha

[@Paulygon]

Imagine going back to the late 80s and showing this to kids. They'd be shitting their pants

[@mariomason95]

Ay my boy Paulygon!

[@screwattack7975]

For all of you wondering, this is simply a tool-assisted speed run, as stated in the description.

[@HyperMetal101]

I bet you Chuck Norris was the one who played this. Only he could do this.

[@scottierbarnes]

I'm trying to beat this game but this one robot keeps kicking my ass.

[@supermario5820]

Shinobi Network Is it TheNintendo27

[@GreenWasTaken1110]

Rob?

[@FireCat_P]

Green Grass Sonic you don’t get the reference 😔

[@GreenWasTaken1110]

I get it

[@GreenWasTaken1110]

It’s rob

[@AndrewBlechinger]

I love how people are watching the button presses being played back ON AN ACTUAL NES, WITH AN ACTUAL SMB CART, and still find it in themselves to call hax. This is a monumental triumph in the long history of tool-assisted speedruns, the console verification that proves that everything they take thousands of tries to do perfectly can, hypothetically, be done in real-time.

[@ascentfevers]

Not really. Left+Right inputs can't be done by a human, unless they're using a modified controller.

[@cookandchill2209]

Uhu, ever tried playing this game and jump that close to the flowers? I call bs

[@FireCat_P]

Rens the games hot box is closely accurate, you can get really close to the flowers

[@turbomario]

@@cookandchill2209 the original mario’s hitboxes are pretty easy to cheese once you get good..

[@JSC178]

Straight turned into Ryu from Ninja Gaiden at 3:54... LOL

[@hansonsux]

not what the title implies. button presses are recorded.

[@Amaraticando]

I love the perfection of this emulator and how people managed to make the TASes run on an actual console. The smallest emulation error would desync everything. So congratulations to them and to HappyLee who beat the previous run. I wonder whether every console, specially ones that read CDs, are deterministic?

[@Thewolfguys.cartoons2000]

Darbian: I beat the world record during my speedrun on Super Mario bros, I'm the best speedrunner ever. That little machine robot thing: *hold my beer*

[@ORaYBeast]

This is proof that tases arent cheating..

[@thenoone4900]

3:20 Perfect Timing!!

[@andrewmcdonald1614]

3:53 to 3:55 LOL. This robot is trying to show off.

[@xbatusai]

great! congratulations. from emulators to real life!

[@renplays7718]

Now this robot is gonna beat the world record as sure

[@LucidMlem]

Technically it has the fastest possible time with 4:54.03, but tas runs are obviously not accepted

[@djvelocity]

I’ll seriously never get tired of the first 2 levels of Mario 🤩🤩🤩🔥🔥🔥

[@Eriolkun12]

This is the result of almost three decades of training in 14 different universes. Going back to his second adventure is a walk in the park for him, so much he can wall jump in this game too.

[@sfdrew83]

Considering the pixel perfect placement and timings required for these things, I think this experiment proves how accurately the FCEUX actually emulates a real NES. Sometimes people say "do it on a real console or it doesn't count", but clearly there is no difference between the two in terms of executing the game and controlling it.

[@sfdrew83]

That depends on what you mean by deterministic. Even if you consider random numbers, which are present in some NES games, they are not truly random and can be reproduced. We don't really have the ability to generate real random numbers on a computer, so we use quasi-random numbers instead. If you are asking whether recorded button presses will produce the same gameplay on every console, it depends more on the game programming than the hardware. All computers are deterministic.

[@SirBruceX]

4:49 jumps off lava...

[@Patashu]

SMB1 had very poorly programmed hitboxes. Sometime, if you want to be amused, run the game with a hitbox viewer script in emulator. The pirahna plant hitboxes are sooo small and the hammer hitboxes sometimes get fucked up and a bit detached. This is all 100% possible on hardware and emulated correctly by all emulators.

[@TheKeatonWarrior]

you whippersnappers and your TASbot! in my day we had to walk ten miles to get to the arcade and do this all by hand!

[@LightCodeDemonH]

Holy mother of GOD! Mario does wall jumps @ 3:56. Mind = BLOWN!

[@AydenWebb]

This thing really knows everything

[@vaulttech]

3:54 LOL! (but, yeah, I've read the description)

[@DougSalad]

If I may shed some light: A guy, like a human, originally did this run on an emulator, an NES program on the computer, slowing down the game at several points to pull off with perfect precision the tricks seen here. The special emulator records, frame-by-frame, which buttons are pressed at any given moment. This log of button-presses is then transferred to this bot, which can jack in to an actual NES console and playback the button presses in real time. See: TASVideos[dot]org

[@TompaA]

@MrNamegame It's not hacked or anything. A TAS is just slowing down the game so you can get more precision with your input and uses save states and rerecording to fix mistakes. But everything done in the movie can be done on a console if you repeat the same input. It's still the same exact game.

[@mugg1991]

This is a great video! I wouldn't have expected the movie to sync...

[@WarningSDE]

3:52 was amazing

[@MonteMorrible]

3:52

[@pjgat09]

@mtzimmerman This is a play back of a Tool Assisted Speedrun. The creator used an emulator first to record the buttons presses which create this video. The emulator allows you to slow down the game, or redo any parts you die at. This is not meant to be a regular speedrun. I'll update the description to note that.

[@Daisymay0813]

Micro500 l love your videos make more awesome videos

[@HelloThisIsMeYes]

why is this so impressive

[@TompaA]

@SolusGhost If Mario is falling against an enemy, it doesn't matter where he will hit the enemy, Mario will still land on it. The piranha plants have a "weird" hitbox. Meaning that the whole flower won't kill Mario. And if you fall through the flower to enter a pipe, it is possible to do so without getting hurt. This run is as legit as any other Tool Assisted Speedrun.

[@MatthewCampbell765]

Bowser, you have a freakin' robot Mario trying to save the princess. You're screwed.

[@Noxxa]

@HardcoreTVgabber You mean, tool assisted speedruns exactly like this one? Tool-assisted speedruns are usually done on game ROMs on console emulators for PC. What this bot does is take an input file from one of those emulators, and play back the input on a real NES. The revolutionary part of this is that this is a speedrun from an emulator (FCEUX), which syncs back perfectly on a real NES.

[@TompaA]

@MegaMario9005 Oh yeah, that part. All walls are made out of 16*16 pixel blocks. If Mario will land between two such blocks, with the right speed, he'll get stuck in the wall for one frame. During that frame you are able to do a wall jump.

[@PSXMicha]

this is not a bot, this is andrewg presenting his new mario run :D

[@niceguy01]

the flags dont even go down when he gets to the castles WTF? it doesnt even get the one ups & the mushrooms.

[@Jordossmillan]

Does it look like he needed them?

[@lilusichka]

Just think for once, a very old (plz dont hate) game probably has some glitches, right?

[@ChaseRiver2]

This is known as the flagpole glitch, it was theorized a long time ago but hasn't been incorporated into speedrunning until several years ago. It involved a complex setup and precise frame and sub-pixel perfect jumping. It skips the animation of the flag going down the pole, saving about 1.5 seconds.

[@ObadiahtheSlim]

Guys, wall jumping is possible in Super Mario. If you push the jump at the frame you hit the wall, it works. The pass through wall trick is similar. Both are possible, but nigh impossible to do in un-assisted play.

[@TompaA]

@MegaMario9005 How he survived the turtle? The game has a kinda weird way of checking if Mario is landing on an enemy or not. As long as Mario is falling down, he'll land on an enemy wherever he may touch it, even if the enemy lands on him.

[@TompaA]

@JoshuYT Considering it was done in hte movie, yes that is possible. The walljumping is done by landing between two 16x16 pixel blocks and jumping at the very frame you do so.

[@pjgat09]

@coffeetablesex Good catch, that is a green light. I swapped it out a few years ago when I was bored. I'll use a different NES with a red light for any other videos I shoot to cut down on the confusion.

[@НиколайНосорев-о5ц]

So, bot simply perform recorded button presses on chip?

[@thegameconsole4508]

man, this is really a lot of programming!

[@TompaA]

@SolusGhost At 03:52 Mario was falling, and then it doesn't matter if the turtle hits Mario or the other way around, it will still be the same effect. The hammers is because of the hitboxes in the game. As this is a Tool Assisted Speedrun, he could easily jump so that he was as close to the hammer as possible without dying, and that he did. Again, with the fire, it's because of the hitboxes not being as big as the whole sprite. I'm not being naive, I know it isn't fake.

[@Flippy]

I want schematics for this thing please.

[@djsquare510]

I would love to buy one of these. It would be sweet to see any speed run on the actual system.

[@TompaA]

@SolusGhost You should have in mind that the bot is just adding the input to the game. Which means that the run can't be fake.

[@johnnykramer8026]

Hes so good like mario has no colistion he jumps over those bugs like crazy!

[@jmc4789]

Do it on a console and I'll be impre- oh, wait. Anyway, nice job putting it all together, can't wait to see if some of the other games work!

[@pjgat09]

@TimeSpaceMage If you know what you're doing its a fairly simple circuit. I had the NES trigger an interrupt on the arduino every time it wants controller information (latch pulse). When that happens, the buttons are stored into the shift register and the arduino changes the buttons before the next latch. The most difficult part was storing the button data. I put together a raw SD library form some info I found and got it to work .Check out the instructables link if you want to try building one.

[@kafakoparan]

3:53 Beyond pro players.

[@SunPizzaRAHH]

You just gotta love mario bros...The best

[@Wakssbm]

@MrNamegame It doesn't change a thing. A person played on an emulator on the computer, and he could beat the game. Another person took those controls as we call them "input" and inserted them into his bot you see on the console. The bot is just playing back one man's controls he put into the emulator. If there was ANY difference between the emulator and the real console, the movie would not play back correctly, mario wouldn't have finished the game. Therefore, the game behave doesn't change

[@TompaA]

@SolusGhost All of them are indeed because of the hitboxes and at many places it is really easy to do it on console (As seen in this video for example). Many of the times it is because the flower is about to go into the pipe again, where you are unable to get killed by it. Other times he's touching the top, or the side, of the flower without dying, this is because of bad hitboxes. No matter what you say or believe, nothing is fake and you can do this yourself too.

[@ltearthworm]

@pandaSmore not sure where the sarcasm comes in, but he recorded the screen so he could show it was on the console and not an emulator

[@olss0nftw]

Awesome work, Didnt know that you could wall jump like that.

[@TompaA]

@MrNamegame At 4:49 is a moving platform, really hard to see though. There's no way to bounce on the lava in this game.

[@weirwindle111]

I would love to see this bot desync half way through.

[@Amaraticando]

The computers are, if you don't include random factors from the physical world. For instance, the site random dot org says its RNG comes from atmospheric noise. Maybe, some video games have a similar randomness. Specially those that read a CD, whose data reading sometimes fails or slowdowns.

[@JohnnyMontilla]

Wow!

[@lifehackertips]

koopa: WTF JUST HAPPENED?? Five minutes ago some shroom came in here screaming "MARIO'S COMING!!" and now i'm dead?!? WTH?!!??

[@TompaA]

@SolusGhost The thing is, I know what a TAS is. The only thing that is stored in a TAS is pure input of a game. If you replay the emulator movie file with the emulator, it will just add the input to the game, just as the bot is doing. If it was fake, like if it was using a game genie code, the movie wouldn't replay correctly. So you CAN NOT cheat with a Tool Assisted Speedrun. The hitboxes are smaller than the sprite, not the same size. And that's one of the reasons you don't get killed.

[@GetYaMindCorrect]

Beats it in 4 mins & 54 seconds, amazing!

[@krazekreations9890]

The good ole days.

[@mimitchibubble131]

I guess we found a new speedrun category, the bot%. 😅

[@SolusGhost]

@Tomtelala You should keep in mind the bot is just copying the game of a other player. So it CAN be fake. Read the description. HappyLee made this run, not the "robot" the robot is simply copying HappyLee's button pushes-

[@pjgat09]

@sticktendo The console talks to the controller asking for input on a fairly consistent basis. When the console starts up and is ready for input, it starts asking, and my device just responds to that. If I were to turn off the console the bot would just pause, and wait for the console to start asking again.

[@schoenbaum]

endless hours of my child hood waisted as a robot can do it in a few minutes

[@TimeSpaceMage]

@pjgat09 OK cool, found it. I admit I haven't done much physical work with building circuits, but the procedural format of the steps is really handy and a good reference. It looks like a really fun project.

[@EriktheSonicfan]

I, for one, welcome our new computer overlords.

[@t_daems9182]

When a robot plays cod and landing every shot

[@TinchoXII]

Holy shit fast. That mario is pure hax.

[@ananthmadan3611]

TAS? That is a ROBOT, not a TOOL XD. Also, at 1:28, isn't it possible to clip through the top of the pipe to get to the warp, instead of jumping over it, and thus getting to the warp even earlier?

[@LuigiFan04]

Ecks Dee.

[@ilanzatonski8826]

It's not really a robot it's a chip with recorded inputs. It's on the NES on the right, doesn't really look like a robot

[@MiniIand]

When you do the pipe clip you have to wait a bit before moving while falling onto the block inside the pipe. While you're falling, the game pushes Mario to the right a bit, so he has to fall in the pit between the Worlds 2 and 3 pipes in order to scroll the screen far enough that it sends you to World 4 instead of the Minus World. The way that this TAS does it is that it clips through the block in the wall and starts running immediately so that Mario doesn't get pushed to the right of the screen. Because of this, Mario can just jump on the edge of the World 3 pipe to scroll the screen far enough and then go down the World 4 pipe, taking up less time as he doesn't go down the pit. The reason why runners don't do this in RTA is that it requires really hard subpixel manipulation in order to get the clip through the wall _and then_ you have to do the pipe jump off of the World 3 pipe and turn around quickly enough to save the framerule. It's simply just much easier to do the pipe clip in real time.

[@TompaA]

@johneymute No TASes are using cheats in the making. Only abusing flaws in the game. Instead of explaining these for you, go to the website TASVideos (Linked in the description) click on "Game Resources" and then "Super Mario Bros.". There you'll find a lot of information on the different flaws in the game and how the game works in general.

[@1191SPEED]

Yesterday at the market I bought the cartridge of this game included duck hunt :) 2 games in a cartridge

[@Denamic]

@animephoenix77 Simple. It skirts the hitboxes as close as physically possible without actually hitting them. And if timed and aimed absolutely perfectly, it is possible to do wall jumps. A human can't do it at will though. It requires far too much accuracy for a human to pull off reliably. Glitches, yay!

[@latintiger]

so that how these TAS robots look like

[@pjgat09]

@soweluww I've already considered that idea. I have plans to make a nice small board for this, but if it were to go into the controller it would need batteries. I may look into it further, but for now it will remain external.

[@tetsujin_144]

Clean cartridges, and either clean+repair or replace the cartridge slot connector. That's pretty much all it takes.

[@sfdrew83]

I'm afraid not. There are ways of generating random numbers from nature, such as atmospheric noise and particles coming off unstable elements like Uranium. However, no computer that I know of (I'm a computer scientist) uses these methods; instead, they use algorithms which generate random numbers based on a "seed". Usually, the seed is taken from the time or date so that it will be different all the time, but it isn't random. Given the same seed, you'll get the same number.

[@raulomargarcia]

sorry i meant to say that in 3:54 there is some kind of programming stuff helping the robot. he could not make those moves on its own

[@amaureaLua]

@Jayncota That would be more like 2^8 possible combinations per frame, and with 17868 frames, it gives 2^(17868*2^8) = 2^457428 combinations, which is about 10^1376973 combinations. The tiny number you quoted would actually have been possible to brute-force with a current supercomputercluster in reasonable time (days to months for a 100000 cpu cluster). The real number is far to huge for there to be any hope. That is for brute force, though, and one can be a bit smarter than that.

[@marcolaranja]

Its time to kick gombas and chew mushroms in real console gameplay!

[@IAmElectrospecter]

I'm impressed that it works on the actual console. What if you were to do this with another system? I feel that emulator inaccuracies would cause desyncs with the playback on the actual system.

[@RarewareToLife]

Not a single Toad was rescued that day.

[@nawsome6471]

How did the robot wall jump in this game?!? That's impossible to do that!!!

[@c0m4g1bb]

OG NES TAS

[@SolusGhost]

@Tomtelala no its not.- there is a part towards the end of a lvl where the turtle jumps onto marios head, not the other way around- he should die there. . (if mario is big he will be small) - But mario simply bumps downwards- And he touches almost every plant in the game, not going into the pipes most of the time. Thats also a death hit. the bot used in the vid might be legit, but the speedrun is not. He should have been dead a million times.

[@soweluww]

Build that sucker into the controller itself! Talk about a turbo button...

[@ChaosXUnleashed]

I can't imagine facing that in online games. :>

[@Itsbrown4606]

Now, if I understand TASs correctly enough, don't the replay files even sync the RNG that games utilize so that way the replay is crystal clear? Would this translate into consoles as well or will there be an occasional Hammer Bros. hammer that gets Mario or something?

[@TompaA]

The bot is adding the input from the TAS to the console.

[@Cqub3]

It's actually the NTSC version, even tough the PAL version had a slower CPU frequency, the Super mario brothers music was faster

[@SirAwesomeEsq]

How did you get it to not die? There are a few spots where Mario kills Koopas from underneath them, walks on fire, jumps on items underwater and even jumps off the sides of walls. Still a very cool video, but I don't think the fastest completion can really be touted since there are obvious hacks added to the game play.

[@TimeSpaceMage]

Awesome! Oh ok, so it's a socket connection. For a moment there I was confused on how you secured it. It seems like a fairly simple circuit to send a byte of controller input every frame... so what else does it have to process besides the input request, and how long did it take to build this?

[@LarsSod]

I would buy this if it was put into a controller, for sure. So bad ass.

[@TompaA]

@SolusGhost If you jump the right way on them, yes you can. Falling through at the right time with the right speed and position, you can go through a flower and enter a pipe while it is there. If you go to tasvideos' website, click on "Game Resources" and then "Super Mario Bros", you'll find a lot of glitches in the game and explained how and why they work There are a lot of games where it looks like the character got hit, most of the cases it is because of bad hitbox detection, calm down please

[@ShiningNegro]

Wait a minute there was wall jumping back then o.o holy crap!!

[@rockymitsu]

That nes bot is a open-source project or not?? I want to have one like that!!