Classic video games were 'super hard', researchers find

Still think your elders who played 20- to 30-year-old games like Super Mario Bros. and Donkey Kong had an easy time beating their opponents? Think again.

 

A group of scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the Free University of Brussels found these "old" games turned out to be "super hard," the MIT Technology Review reported.

 

"These guys prove that several classic Nintendo games from the 80s are all NP-hard. The list includes the first three incarnations of Super Mario Bros, Donkey Kong and all the Legend of Zelda games," it said.

 

It said these games are essentially the same in that they start at a specific point with the aim of reaching some goal.

 

But the question the scientists pose is this: given the starting position, is it possible reach the goal? 

 

"If it is hard to decide even this question, then it is certainly hard to find an optimal path," they said.

 

Technology Review said the three showed all the games are essentially versions of another problem called 3-SAT, which is known to be NP-complete.

 

The process here is to show that 3SAT reduces to these problems in certain circumstances, thereby proving they are NP-hard.

 

A separate article on gaming site Kotaku.com said the scientists - Greg Aloupis, Erik Demaine and Alan Guo - found most of the games can be classified as "NP-hard," a scientific term meaning they're about as tough as a problem can get.

 

"So if your youth was misspent playing Super Mario Bros, Donkey Kong or any of the other games these guys prove NP-Hard, then knowing how hard they actually were might provide a little comfort that you didn't waste your time entirely. Then again, probably not!" Technology Review said. — TJD, GMA News