It really is a crying shame that LittleBigPlanet has had poor sales thus far. The title offers a dizzying array of tools for creative individuals to run free, and when you marry brilliant minds with the game’s level editor, you get an endless stream of amazing work. Exhibit A came weeks before the full game was even released: a crafty programming genius built a calculator capable of performing addition and subtraction, and the world was blown away.

Here’s another entry in the list of awesomeness to come out of LittleBigPlanet: PSN user Cristel, who likely has a comprehensive background in computer science/programming, has created two working versions of tic-tac-toe! Here’s Cristel’s description:

Play Tic Tac Toe against a machine! There are 2 boards. One is beatable, one hopefully isn’t (if you don’t cheat). You can also take a look at the machine. Have fun!

I believe the scientific term to describe my current state is ... *HEAD ASPLODE*. I’m trying to decide what’s more unbelievable -- this, or the calculator -- and I keep flipping back and forth. It’s hard to tell since the video is pretty crappy, but it appears that Cristel simply used a “brute force” method of programming -- i.e., she inputted all the possible outcomes for tic-tac-toe. Since the player is always X, and X always goes first, there are 255,168 possible games (according to Wikipedia)! Of course, appearances can be deceiving, and Cristel says she definitely didn’t use brute force.

In the end, I think I’m going to have to go with this over the calculator for “most impressive computational LBP level,” since I’m pretty sure that this is the first documented proof of artificial intelligence created by a user. How crazy is that? My hat’s off to you, Cristel.

[Via Kotaku]

[Update: Cristel has let us know that she’s not a “he” (a poor and regretful assumption on my part), and that she didn’t use brute force. I really should stop talking out of my ass when it comes to programming matters. --Samit]