Papers › Playing SNES in the Retro Learning Environment
Playing SNES in the Retro Learning Environment
Nadav Bhonker, Shai Rozenberg, Itay Hubara
Mastering a video game requires skill, tactics and strategy. While these attributes may be acquired naturally by human players, teaching them to a computer program is a far more challenging task. In recent years, extensive research was carried out in the field of reinforcement learning and numerous algorithms were introduced, aiming to learn how to perform human tasks such as playing video games. As a result, the Arcade Learning Environment (ALE) (Bellemare et al., 2013) has become a commonly used benchmark environment allowing algorithms to train on various Atari 2600 games. In many games the state-of-the-art algorithms outperform humans. In this paper we introduce a new learning environment, the Retro Learning Environment --- RLE, that can run games on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES), Sega Genesis and several other gaming consoles. The environment is expandable, allowing for more video games and consoles to be easily added to the environment, while maintaining the same interface as ALE. Moreover, RLE is compatible with Python and Torch. SNES games pose a significant challenge to current algorithms due to their higher level of complexity and versatility.
Code
Repository list and official/mentioned flags are the archive's, frozen 2025-07-28. Reachability, where shown, is from one Syntology probe window (2026-09-16 to 2026-09-18); repositories not probed show nothing. GitHub stars are not tracked.
Code Syntology ran Syntology
Not run by Syntology. Nothing on this page verifies that the listed code works.
Tasks
Results from the paper archive 2025-07-28
| Task | Dataset | Model | Metric | Value | Rank at snapshot | Leaderboard | Report |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SNES Games | F-Zero | Dueling D-DQN | Score | 5161 | #1 of 3 | Archive leaderboard | report |
| SNES Games | F-Zero | D-DQN | Score | 3636 | #2 of 3 | Archive leaderboard | report |
| SNES Games | F-Zero | DQN | Score | 3116 | #3 of 3 | Archive leaderboard | report |
| SNES Games | Gradius III | Dueling D-DQN | Score | 16929 | #1 of 3 | Archive leaderboard | report |
| SNES Games | Gradius III | D-DQN | Score | 12343 | #2 of 3 | Archive leaderboard | report |
| SNES Games | Gradius III | DQN | Score | 7583 | #3 of 3 | Archive leaderboard | report |
| SNES Games | Mortal Kombat | Dueling D-DQN | Score | 169300 | #1 of 3 | Archive leaderboard | report |
| SNES Games | Mortal Kombat | DQN | Score | 83733 | #2 of 3 | Archive leaderboard | report |
| SNES Games | Mortal Kombat | D-DQN | Score | 56200 | #3 of 3 | Archive leaderboard | report |
| SNES Games | Super Mario | Dueling D-DQN | Score | 20030 | #1 of 3 | Archive leaderboard | report |
| SNES Games | Super Mario | D-DQN | Score | 16946 | #2 of 3 | Archive leaderboard | report |
| SNES Games | Super Mario | DQN | Score | 11765 | #3 of 3 | Archive leaderboard | report |
| SNES Games | Wolfenstein | DQN | Score | 100 | #1 of 3 | Archive leaderboard | report |
| SNES Games | Wolfenstein | D-DQN | Score | 83 | #2 of 3 | Archive leaderboard | report |
| SNES Games | Wolfenstein | Dueling D-DQN | Score | 40 | #3 of 3 | Archive leaderboard | report |
Ranks are positions in the archive's leaderboards as they stood at the 2025-07-28 snapshot. Results published since then are not among these rows, so a rank here is not a current standing.
Report a problem or propose a change · a person checks every report against the paper or source before anything changes; decisions are listed on /corrections