On a tangential note, HNers might be interested in the annual Ms Pacman vs Ghosts competition: http://www.pacman-vs-ghosts.net/ Entrants are required to write a controller for Ms Pacman or the ghosts using at least one computational intelligence technique. Entries are played against each other in a tournament. It's a great way to get some experience with stuff like neural nets, evolutionary algorithms and so forth.
That reminds me of the 2005 ICFP contest (http://icfpc.plt-scheme.org/spec.html)