Source: http://motherboard.vice.com/read/why-art...

Games are ideal platforms for this sort of work; the logic, creativity, situational awareness, and decision-making skills required of players to both play and create new levels is what researchers are striving for in AI. But what, exactly, is it about Mario games that has made them the platform of choice for researching machine intelligence? Is it something about those finely-tuned mechanics, which made it such a legendary game in the first place? Perhaps AI researchers just love to play the game like the rest of us? As it turns out, the answer is a bit of both.