Wrecking “Wrecking Crew” optimally

Wrecking Crew is one of the classic title for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), featuring an odd-looking Mario. The goal of the game is to destroy construction-related materials like brick walls and ladders using a hammer. In the meantime, the player has to steer clear of the enemies. The game successfully combine both the puzzle…

AI Learning Excitebike with XGBoost

Following the incredible boost in machine learning applications in the recent years, people have made artificial intelligence (AI) learn many tasks. For example, it has learn to drive cars, translate languages, understand pictures, filter emails, etc. This incredible development now even extends to video games. A notable effort came from Deepmind with a Convolutional Neural Network algorithm…

Duck Hunt – Ducks Flight Analysis

One of the most memorable NES game is Duck Hunt. Using the incredible NES Zapper (you know, that orange gun), the player has to aim and fire ducks on the screen. The classic game might not work anymore on your modern TV, but there are adapted versions on the market, including a version on the Wii U. In this…

Pokémon type classifier using their colors

Hello everybody! Here is my second article on the world of Pokémon. The previous article was very practical, showing actual advices for the first rival combat. Today, we’ll do something more conceptual and link colors with Pokémon types. As you may know, most of the Pokémon have colors that correspond to their types: blue – water, orange –…

The fingers drinking game

Today, we’ll do a small analysis on the drinking game Fingers. In this game, people compete until a “winner” has to drink a cup (of alcoholic beverage). The game has simple mechanics, but still yields some interesting statistical reflexions: Some numbers are more probable than others. Markov chains can be used to compute the probabilities. The game is unfair.…

Boggle et mots populaires

Aujourd’hui, nous analyserons le jeu Boggle de Hasbro. Ce jeu consiste à trouver des mots dans un court laps de temps en utilisant des lettres aléatoires provenant de dés à 6 faces. Ces mots donnent des points proportionnels à la longueur du mot. Les mots doivent avoir 3 lettres et plus et la liste de…