Today in news we already knew: An international team of scientists has confirmed mathematically -- in a paper titled "Classic Nintendo Games are (NP-)Hard" -- that Super Mario Bros. is hard to beat.

From the paper:

Suppose there is a solution and consider any path that Mario takes through the stage. This path needs to visit every enemy at most once. The only other permanent objects in the game are potential Koopa shells, but these can only slide and fall, so they must either fall down a bottomless pit eventually and leave the game, or they enter a cycle where they bounce back and forth between two walls. In either case, the shell can be ignored, because a perfect player gains nothing by jumping on the shell to stop it. Therefore there exists a solution that is polynomial in the size of the input.

[wapo]

Community's Joel McHale hangs a lampshade on the whole "forced viral video" trope in a new spot for Nintendo's 3DS, featuring Mario, Luigi and a lot of models.

This commercial is clearly streets ahead.

[joystiq]

Cracked's After Hours crew has a reasoned debate about whether Mario or Bowser is the real villain of the Super Mario Bros. games, and Bowser fares better than you might expect for a spiky, kingdom-invading kidnapper.

Of course, it's not hard to look good when you're up against "a dick with a moustache."

To be fair to Mario, though, bringing Donkey Kong Jr. into it was kind of a low blow.

[cracked]

Mario Theme on Accordians of the Day: