Team of MIT Computer Scientists Conduct Study That Proves Super Mario Bros. Can Be as Hard as Solving Complex Math Problems

Ever get miserably stuck on a level while playing Super Mario Bros.? Well, the good news (if you could call it that) is that a team of computer scientists from MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL) just proved the game's levels are 'scientifically difficult to complete.'

Yes, the team said that solving a level in the game is 'as hard as the hardest problem in the complexity class PSPACE.'

What does this all mean? 

Well, that completing a Super Mario Bros. level is more difficult than factoring large numbers or the Traveling Salesman Problem -- classic algorithmic problem often used by AI experts. 

“The paper doesn’t attempt to establish that any of the levels in commercial versions of Super Mario Brothers are that hard, only that it’s possible to construct PSPACE-hard levels from the raw materials of the Super Mario world,” the team wrote.

Either way, pretty cool stuff going on here.