April: Super Mario hackers’ tricks could protect software from bugs | News and features | University of Bristol
Video gamers who exploit glitches in games can help experts better understand buggy software, students at the University of Bristol suggest.
The students examined four classic Super Mario games, and analysed 237 known glitches within them, classifying a variety of weaknesses. This research explores whether these are the same as the bugs exploited in more conventional software.
Nintendo’s Super Mario is the quintessential video game. To understand the sorts of glitches speedrunners exploit, they examined four of the earliest Mario platforming games - Super Mario Bros (1985), Super Mario Bros. 3 (1988), Super Mario World (1990) and Super Mario 64 (1996). Whilst these games are old, they are still competitively run by speedrunners with new records reported in the news. The games are well also well understood, having been studied by speedrunners for decades, ensuring that there are large numbers of well researched glitches for analysis.
Currently the world record time for conquering Super Mario World stands at a blistering 41 seconds. The team set out to understand 237 known glitches within them, classifying a variety of weaknesses to see if they can help software engineers make applications more robust.
