
Article
Why we love Mario
On three decades of affection and obsession.
On three decades of affection and obsession.
This year’s Awesome Games Done Quick charity event started on Sunday, and one team has already used a bot to put Twitch into Pokémon Red, and Super Mario Bros. into Super Mario World. Usually, a Tool-Assisted Speedrun can only be accomplished with an emulator—the button-presses have to be frame-perfect, and at 30 or 60 frames a second, that’s way too fast for regular humans. The TASBot—mounted on an R.O.B. unit, of course—is a modified Super Nintendo controller designed for accomplishing Tool-Assisted Speedruns in the real world. The bot is attached to a computer, and inputs a list of pre-written button-presses…