We present Lode Encoder, a gamified mixed-initiative level creation system for the classic platform-puzzle game Lode Runner. The system is built around several autoencoders which are trained on sets of Lode Runner levels. When fed with the user's design, each autoencoder produces a version of that design which is closer in style to the levels that it was trained on. The Lode Encoder interface allows the user to build and edit levels through 'painting' from the suggestions provided by the autoencoders. Crucially, in order to encourage designers to explore new possibilities, the system does not include more traditional editing tools. We report on the system design and training procedure, as well as on the evolution of the system itself and user tests.

The Monitor is a weekly column devoted to everything happening in the WIRED world of culture, from movies to memes, TV to Twitter. The Super Mario Bros. Movie introduces its namesake duo with a commercial. It's Brooklyn, before they get sucked into the Mushroom Kingdom, and they've made a local TV ad to hawk their plumbing skills. As a filmmaking tool, it's a near-perfect piece of exposition, establishing who the Mario brothers are in mere minutes. Most transmedia properties are about milking intellectual property for fun and profit.

"The worst thing I ever did? It was a fuckin' nightmare. The whole experience was a nightmare. It had a husband-and-wife team directing, whose arrogance had been mistaken for talent. After so many weeks their own agent told them to get off the set! These are the words of the late, great Bob Hoskins to Simon Hattenstone of the Guardian in 2007.

Player modelling is the field of study associated with understanding players. One pursuit in this field is affect prediction: the ability to predict how a game will make a player feel. We present novel improvements to affect prediction by using a deep convolutional neural network (CNN) to predict player experience trained on game event logs in tandem with localized level structure information. We test our approach on levels based on Super Mario Bros. (Infinite Mario Bros.) and Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels (Gwario), as well as original Super Mario Bros. levels. We outperform prior work, and demonstrate the utility of training on player logs, even when lacking them at test time for cross-domain player modelling.

It isn't quite fair to call the engineer Masayuki Uemura, who died on December 6th, at the age of seventy-eight, an unsung architect of the global game industry. He is widely known among gamers for his work designing the Family Computer, the game console that became the Nintendo Entertainment System abroad, and its successor, the Super Famicom, known outside of Japan as the Super Nintendo. After retiring from Nintendo, in 2004, he remained deeply engaged with the industry, directing the Ritsumeikan Center for Game Studies in Kyoto until stepping down in March of this year. Despite the cravings that Uemura's machines invoked in the young--and not so young--customers who coveted them, his creations were inevitably overshadowed by the content that they were designed to serve up: the games themselves, the virtual adventures that were eagerly consumed by countless players around the planet. But these games would not have reached their destinations without Uemura's consoles.

The N64 expansion includes titles like "The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time," "Paper Mario," "Starfox 64," all classics of the console. It will also include some niche titles, like "Winback," probably the first shooting game ever to use a cover system, and the rails shooter classic "Sin and Punishment." The expansion is a small step toward addressing long-standing fan complaints about Nintendo's lack of interest in supporting its archives, particularly since its Game Boy Advance and Nintendo DS and 3DS libraries are vast and beloved. The Nintendo DS is the second best-selling video game console of all time.

During Thursday's latest Nintendo Direct event, acclaimed video game designer Miyamoto Shigeru announced that the company's upcoming feature length animation project -- in conjunction with American film studio, Illumination -- now has a firm North American theatrical release date of December 21st, 2022. "Here we go!" Chris Pratt as Mario Anya Taylor-Joy as Peach Charlie Day as Luigi Jack Black as Bowser Keegan-Michael Key as Toad Seth Rogen as Donkey Kong Fred Armisen as Cranky Kong Kevin Michael Richardson as Kamek Sebastian Maniscalco as Spike Cameos from Charles Martinet pic.twitter.com/Yio2pql1Jy While release dates for Europe, Japan, and other markets have yet to be revealed, Miyamoto did share the studio's key character casting decisions. Chris Pratt will voice Mario. "He's so cool," Miyamoto commented.

Reinforcement learning has its limitations, though. Agrawal notes that it often takes a huge amount of training to learn a task, and the process can be difficult if the feedback required isn't immediately available. That's where curiosity could help. The researchers tried the approach, in combination with reinforcement learning, within two simple video games: Mario Bros., a classic platform game, and VizDoom, a basic 3-D shooter title. In both games, the use of artificial curiosity made the learning process more efficient.

Sunday will mark 35 years since the Nintendo Entertainment System arrived on America's shores, saving a crashed video game industry and making a generation of gamers out of people who first learned to "play Nintendo" on the NES. For this 35-year-old, it's striking how Nintendo's breakout home game system, which my parents bought for my older brothers and which I literally grew up with, remains not only the bedrock of the company's corporate identity--witness the 8-bit Mario on your browser tab if you visit the Big N's website--but its creative wellspring too. Witness how Super Mario Bros. 35, Nintendo's new contender in the über-popular battle royal genre, is a thin remix of 1985's Super Mario Bros., an NES launch title. Or see the NES Classic, the recent bestselling miniversion of the console with 30 games packed in. While very few people may have the original gray-on-gray NES hooked up to their TV anymore, the titles designed for it will remain relevant for Nintendo fans of all ages as long as the company stays in the game.

Nintendo is marking 35 years since the original release of the Super Mario Bros. video game in Japan with new updated versions, playable on the Switch console. Super Mario 3D All-Stars is a special games bundle marking the anniversary containing updates of three classic games – 1996's Super Mario 64, 2002's Super Mario Sunshine and 2007's Super Mario Galaxy. The classic 1996 game, adored by a generation of children in the late 1990s, sees players running around an open-world trying to collect stars during various missions, while the other two games put the gameplay on a tropical island and far-off planets. As part of the new package, all three games feature updated HD graphics, controls adapted to the Switch's Joy-Con and an in-game music-player mode to play the original music. Super Mario 3D All-Stars, which is retailing for £49.99 and is available to pre-order now, launches for the Nintendo Switch on September 18 as both a download and physical cartridge.