So you took a game that used to take a few dozen KB of memory and an 8-bit CPU running at less than 2MHz, and turned it into one requiring many orders of magnitude more memory and CPU speed? I'm impressively disturbed.
It really isn't impressive when we see 1980s-era games recreated in JavaScript, for example, and the same should be true when dealing with Python.
That's not to say that this effort lacks value. The author likely enjoyed working on it, and maybe learned something while working on it, too. It could be a useful reference work for those getting started with Python or PyGame, as well. But we surely should not be impressed by it in any way.
That's what I thought too.
Not sure why it's getting as much attention. Maybe because it's the combination of Python and Super Mario. A very popular language combined with a very popular game and a breeze of nostalgia.
However it's a fun little project but being on the HN frontpage is a little too much attention for something like that.
But it is fun. It's called "working for hack value"!
http://js1k.com/2014-dragons/demo/1659
I'm defining a few as 10 :P
Also man hours are now a lot more valuable than CPU time. This is why people use things like python instead of coding in assembler, as would have been done for the original.