Science has spoken: The games &#39;oldies&#39; are not easy

Technology - Video Games
Tuesday, 10 April 2012 04:00

I do not know if any of you have had the incredible satisfaction of playing a title "old man" in front of a child and watch mock the "ugly games we played." Then I could laugh out loud when, after paying for test control, the pre-pubescent could not even deliver the first pit and jump over an enemy correctly. I really loved the show that "my games" are not as easy as they seem.

It turns out that science gives me the reason and categorizes games Nintendo and Super Mario Bros, Donkey Kong Country Legend of Zelda, Metroid and Pokémon as "NP hard", a term of computational complexity that says the time execution of an algorithm ... well ... in short, these games are difficult and researchers proved it mathematically. Although I think we discovered the fun way, dying over and over again until we learned the time of "spawneo" of the bugs, the frequency of attacks and speed of mobile platforms, where were the 1ups and bonuses and clear, after developing blisters on their fingers like that later became proud calluses.

IProgrammer Alex Armstrong explains about these difficulties:

[This type of algorithms] are the most difficult to resolve by computational means for the time it takes to find a solution tends to increase as rapidly with the size of the problem and just not practical to run the computer.

The researchers, like us, know that there is a way to find "the right way" to overcome these games, and some become so good that they are able to finish them in minutes , but this way takes time to be decoded after trial and error.

The study covers only five cases, but I would add two titles that I think, were quite difficult to master: Contra and Megaman.

What other titles included in the list?




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