title: How does Dijkstra's Algorithm and A-Star compare?
body: <p>I was looking at what the guys in the <a href="http://julian.togelius.com/mariocompetition2009/" rel="noreferrer">Mario AI Competition</a> have been doing and some of them have built some pretty neat Mario bots utilizing the A* (A-Star) Pathing Algorithm.  </p>
  
  <p><a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/U47gw.png" rel="noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/U47gw.png" alt="alt text"></a><br>
  (<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DlkMs4ZHHr8" rel="noreferrer">Video of Mario A* Bot In Action</a>)</p>
  
  <p>My question is, how does A-Star compare with Dijkstra?  Looking over them, they seem similar.</p>
  
  <p>Why would someone use one over the other?  Especially in the context of pathing in games?</p>