UncommentatedPannen | THI Faster Mainland via Double Goomba Bounce @UncommentatedPannen | Uploaded 1 year ago | Updated 2 hours ago
I reach the THI mainland 0xA using a double goomba bounce.

This strat saves about 5 minutes over the previous strat of using a star dance clip (youtu.be/qHK3MKrcJd8). And this 5 minute time save applies to 5 different stars in THI (all main stars except Pluck the Piranha Flower), so this strat saves 25 minutes in a full game ABC run. I also believe that this new strat could be done even faster with better goomba movement. But for this video, I settled for reasonably fast, since I mainly just wanted to prove that it was possible.

Separately, this new strat doesn't use a 100 coin star like the old strat did, meaning this frees up the 100 coin star to be used elsewhere in the level. Unfortunately, there are currently no good uses for it, but at least we know we have it at our disposal in case it helps save an A press on Wiggler's Red Coins, which is currently 2xA.

Here's the history of this strat. Years ago, I had shown that we could get onto the item block using 2 goomba bounces and a misalignment (youtu.be/6tebqdCd1kE). However, an issue with that plan was that the misalignment corner of the item block is on the opposite side from the cliff, and so we can't really reach it from bouncing on enemies that fall straight down from the cliff. Later, I showed that we could get onto the item block without using the misalignment if we used 3 bounces (youtu.be/URie0k2JG5c). After that, Marbler (youtube.com/user/supermarble94) pointed out to me that item block walls are so vertically thin that the floor hitbox is available to access just under the upper wall hitbox. Thus, I demonstrated that 2 bounces were sufficient for getting onto the item block from the side nearer the cliff (youtu.be/4LFQd4uvtM0). Later, after much research and testing, I put together a blueprint for how we might achieve this in practice (youtu.be/-t9mbd9q9Wc). And now, I've finally executed that blueprint, proving once and for all that it's possible.

The strat works as follows. First, I lure the two goombas towards each other so that they can interact. I make the west-goomba get stuck, and then I have the east-goomba repeatedly move the west-goomba more to the right. Then I have the two goombas do a double goomba escort so that they walk south-east. Once they're near the edge, I have the koopa walk into the west-goomba to push him off. Meanwhile, the east-goomba jumps in place until he falls off as well. Finally, Mario bounces on both goombas, gets onto the item block, and then reaches the mainland.

Achieving this strat took a lot of brute forcing. And not just completely random brute forcing, but several rounds of strategically focused brute forcing. First, I manually got the goombas to walk towards each other. Then I brute forced dust frames until I got the west-goomba stuck. Next I brute forced dust frames until the east-goomba pushed the west-goomba significantly to the right. I repeated that several times until the west-goomba was in the right position. Then I brute forced dust frames until the goombas did a double goomba escort. That was all fine and dandy, but the real issue was that I ALSO needed the koopa to be in the right position at the right time. So I brute forced koopa pathing until it found one that could make the koopa push off the west-goomba. So then I brute forced dust frames again, this time to redo the exact goomba escort movement while simultaneously getting the koopa to do the movement that was found earlier. Finally, I manually TASed the last bit, where I make the east-goomba repeatedly jump, and then have Mario bounce on the goombas to get up. Overall, this took about a week of non-stop coding.