NES Games and Statistical Analysis

Posted by Zonk on Saturday February 11, 2006 @08:43AM from the serious-science dept.

szadig writes "The New Gamer has published an article which tackles the topic of averaging gameplay. The accompanying video features 15 different players simultaneously shooting their way through the first stage in the NES game Gradius. From the article: 'The average time taken to kill the end level boss was 20.055 seconds, with the fastest player finishing him off in a mere 10.01 seconds. Six people finished the boss off at nearly identical moments. It would seem that the boss, bored with the player, actually self-destructs after 27 seconds. Beyond the almost perfectly synchronized explosions, further proof of this self-destruction can be found in the videos: no 10,000 point bonus (given to players when the boss is defeated) was awarded to these six players and, in a few of the runs, the boss detonated when there wasn't a single bullet near it.' Can we apply other statistical methods to gameplay?"

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Another interesting "average" by Jerf · 2006-02-11 11:39 · Score: 3, Interesting

Another interesting "average", though technically harder to pull off, would be to get 15 players simultaneously watching the same game in real-time, "averaging" in some reasonably manner the 15 inputs coming in, and feeding that to the game. It would be interesting to see if it sucks, or manages to play better than the individuals, or what.
Re:Are you kidding me? by Anonymous Coward · 2006-02-12 11:14 · Score: 2, Interesting

'Anyone who played these games KNOWS its not a matter of "figuring out how to outsmart or out-maneuver the end-level boss..."

It's always been just a matter of memorizing the pattern. Like, no shit.'

From TFA:
"What first caught my eye when compiling the video, which came as a complete shock, was that the end boss wasn't set on a absolute path! Instead, it responds and reacts to the player's actions. Now perhaps this isn't a surprise to all those Gradius pros out there, but I was pretty impressed to see that sort of action from such an old game. In one of the tracks, the boss actually sits at the bottom of the screen, waiting to respond to the player's next move."