[scythe]

Smash is played on analog displays precisely so that the lag between RAM and the display can be as small as possible, usually 50 ms. In fact there's a 50 ms delay added to the AI for this reason. However, the AI takes no account of the fact that it takes about 230 ms for a signal to travel from a human's retina through the occipital lobe and motor cortex and activate the motor neurons in the hand. The AI can also generate input sequences that are nearly impossible for a human, such as the "dustless [i.e. perfect] dashdance".

But this is what a top player (who regularly beats both of the players tested in the study) looks like playing against a hand-coded bot:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qWHM8DNdr8

and this is what the humans eventually learned to do:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=be8UDlVuAl8

Even if you add reaction time, a big part of Smash skill for humans comprises accurately manipulating the analog stick. The computer can just declare any angle it wants; you're not having a fair competition until you build a robot thumb that manipulates a joystick the way humans do, IMO. Otherwise a character like Pikachu can recover perfectly every time.

[vladfi1]

The bots are given a very reduced action set. The Falcon master bot actually had only cardinal directions on the control stick - later bots were also given the 4 diagonals.