Additional notes for The Complete History of the A Button Challenge

Chapter 1 - Early history

No notes


Chapter 2 - The Pannenkoek Revolution

Note 1 (17:30): How holding objects really works - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZyUGT9YPhg
The Art of Cloning - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2AhyDI58-I
The Science of Cloning - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xE2otZ-9os
Releasing Objects - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbgYAyzaT8w

Note 2 (19:30): In reality, the way the game orders object slots is more complex than just by memory address. More on that in Pannenkoek's Science of Cloning - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xE2otZ-9os

Note 3 (34:53): This would be during a star in Tiny-Huge Island to avoid an additional A press to enter that level. In fact, any time a HOLP is set in another level before a star, precautions were taken to ensure that a full-game run would still work without any conflicts. This would prove a bit challenging at times.

Note 4 (41:05): This dive recover is aided by a disjointed hitbox. This will be explained at 1:33:15.

Note 5 (47:50): The Wet-Dry World painting water level uses Mario's Y position, which is at the bottom of his model. This is why the zones look so bottom-heavy, because it's the very bottom of Mario's model that needs to be in that range.

Note 6 (59:20): Spawning point clone - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PG2scmSIjJg


Chapter 3 - From Challenge to Science

Note 7 (1:05:15): Transport clones - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnMZZhaj5S0

Note 8 (1:17:35): If there's one thing I would recommend watching, it's this 3-part series on Walls, Floors & Ceilings.
Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnU7DJXiMAQ
Part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1kbABTyeo8
Part 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRCjVLqjST4

Note 9 (1:21:31): Pannenkoek favoured convenience over optimizing for time. He raised the water so he could copy paste inputs, but he demonstrated in a later video that lowering the water instead is about 9 hours faster: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjdkGWJcDVw
In fact, nowadays, the fastest known strategy for the Wet-Dry World red coins is less than 5 minutes long: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25G6qXpXwHw

Note 10 (1:23:45): Because he's sliding, he has to make sure to hold the control stick back out to the left or forward. Keeping it to the right would make Mario turn into the platform and prevent him from falling off. This is why, while grinding itself is easy to achieve in real time, dive grinding is TAS only because the stick needs to be in different positions on every frame.

Note 11 (1:25:19): Technically, the Tall Tall Mountain secret slide and the Shifting Sand Land pyramid also have loading zones, but they have no grabbable objects.

Note 12 (1:27:15): Blue Coin Clones https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GeID2o7CV0
Although the PU glitch was not yet understood at the time, this is nowhere near the first observation of it either. It dates back to 2005 or earlier.

Note 13 (1:30:46): There is an additional speed type used when flying or swimming that is a 3D vector. Pannenkoek's video about sliding speed conservation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LhXONwmKZDI

Note 14 (1:33:18): More on this and many other examples in Walls, Floors & Ceilings Part 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRCjVLqjST4&t=1017s

Note 15 (1:35:25): There are only two goombas in this trio because the third one is the Mystery Goomba.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zy4LiwZ3Uqk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEBMaAoKRvw

Note 16 (1:36:06): This has since been found not to be true: edge grinding while holding an object can load up to 15 dust particles at once if done right. This is based off the information known at the time. Also, the object slots shown in this visualization are a major simplification. In reality, these slots are shuffled almost every frame.


Chapter 4: The Genius of Tyler Kehne

Note 17 (1:40:48): This assumes the Bowser stages are beaten. Red coins in Dark World and Fire Sea do not incur any additional A presses than just beating the stage, so they were counted as 0xA stars, but the Bowser in the Sky red coin star occurs past the 70-star door, so it was not counted. A proper 0xA run would still have been stuck before Bowser in the Dark World.

Note 18 (1:41:27): The star dance clip was sort of known already, as it was used for WDW 100 coins in the 120 star TAS in 2012, but its potential for ABC purposes had never been considered.

Note 19 (1:42:21): This figure is a bit complicated. The star lowers the effect of gravity on Mario from -4 units/f to -3.2 units/f, so if the star is positioned in such a way that Mario touches it on the first frame of the dive recover, he can ascend as much as 298 units. Since 100-coin stars spawn 245 units higher than where Mario touched a coin, that's usually how much above the ground they will be, which means 298 units is typically not attainable and 280 is a more reasonable upper limit. Note that because Mario's hitbox is 140 units high, despite the star being 245 units above the ground, it's still collectable with a dive recover.

Note 20 (1:47:04): The full Chuckya behaviour is more complex than that. It can wander around, and obviously, grab and throw Mario at a random angle.

Note 21 (1:48:17): The reason why it's 2.67 is because bouncing reflects and cuts its speed to 1/3.

Note 22 (1:48:34): Technically, the limitation is based on Mario's distance to the home. Chuckya can theoretically go anywhere, but since it chases Mario, the limitation indirectly affects Chuckya as well. If Mario goes outside the range of the home, Chuckya will give up chasing him and return home.

Note 23 (1:49:43): The entire level was eventually pieced together by Pannenkoek in January 2015. Note that because the stage is reset by dying at Bowser, Chuckya can indeed be used in two different places without causing a conflict.

Note 24 (1:50:43): Vertical speed conservation had been observed as early as 2010 by Eru, but it wasn't properly understood at the time.

Note 25 (1:51:05): Here are all the actions that preserve vertical speed on landing:
Landing from a dive recover
Landing from a ground pound
Landing from a slide kick bounce
Landing from a lava boost
Landing from a twirl
Landing from a dive with an object held
Landing after throwing an object in the air
Entering the first person mode on the frame Mario lands
Landing immediately when an in-game textbox starts
Landing when a cutscene begins
Landing after collecting a star and exiting the course

Note 26 (1:55:19): The official A press count was 71 at the time of the prediction. The prediction was made a few days before the two Rainbow Ride A press saves I just talked about, but to help create a streamlined narrative, I talked about it first since it was part of the wave of improvements that came from the discovery of SDC, misalignments and VSC. Also, the BitS Chuckya Drop double A press save was only fully realized in a Pannenkoek video in January 2015, even though it was proven possible by Tyler Kehne on October 31st, 2014.

Note 27 (1:56:25): Glitchy ledge grabs were already known, albeit not used in ABC, but this specific application was new.

Note 28 (2:00:00): The glitch itself is fairly old, but it was the first time it was useful for the ABC.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqmYYIQRSuI

Note 29 (2:03:36): If the geometry allows it, it's possible to do a pause buffered dive recover to circumvent this restriction. In fact, this exact strategy is used in Swingin' in the Breeze.

Note 30 (2:08:19): The Complete Fly Guy Route - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TY6899UdXBc
Somewhere Over the Rainbow 0xA - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iiO2kA18O_Y

Note 31 (2:11:43): The count says 56 because to help create a more streamlined narrative, I grouped together some stars that didn't necessarily happen exactly in that order. Snowman's Big Head and Somewhere Over the Rainbow were realized in March, and this next A press save happened before March.

Note 32 (2:13:23): This was already known in the 2000s, but Pannenkoek specifically made a video about this in 2010.

Note 33 (2:14:00): RNG - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MiuLeTE2MeQ
Coin RNG Extremes - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yL0G0LYBG1U
Coin RNG Extremes (Continued) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PXiEbvZoTs

Note 34 (2:17:57): The order between this star and Somewhere Over the Rainbow actually goes the other way around, but they were posted three days apart.

Note 35 (2:23:17): Spawning displacement - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XL8TCplAaWc

Note 36 (2:27:11): The numbers defined by the formula (L² + L) / 2, more commonly written as n(n+1) / 2, are known as triangular numbers.

Note 37 (2:28:14): While it is easiest to do transport cloning in the areas where two home circles intersect, goombas can be pushed out of their home by another goomba that is in its home. Pannen used this method to get most of his goomba clones into the lower left portion of the oasis.


Chapter 5 - Mario Enters Parallel Universes

Note 38 (2:37:05): Because sliding speed is a vector, this can be used to convert -1500 into +1500 speed. If Mario faces the direction of his sliding speed, he will gain positive horizontal speed as a result.

Note 39 (2:37:53): His actual speed is 1375, but because he's on a steep slippery slope, he does what's called a "steep jump". Steep jumps have complex speed calculations that slightly reduce the speed based on the steepness of the slope. The resulting effective speed is 1283, and the formula is 1283 / 4 + 42 = 362 initial speed, from which 4 is taken off every subsequent frame.

Note 40 (2:38:47): The reason why he stays in place while the elevator moves resides in the quartersteps and floor collision. On a given quarterstep, Mario attempts to move. He doesn't collide with the floor of the elevator - in fact, the floor check returns nothing, because he tries to move out of bounds. So his movement is canceled. At no point does he actually collide with the floor of the elevator. While there is a floor check at the start of the frame, it doesn't affect Mario's height. When Mario is kicking, he is airborne, so he lands after one quarterframe and interrupts his movement action.

Note 41 (2:39:46): There is actually more than one exception, the most notable other one being moneybags. Here's the full list of objects that can update their home: scuttlebug, moneybag, castle grounds birds, Boo in the castle hallway, camera Lakitu, Chain Chomp, floating wooden boards in Wet-Dry World, haunted chair, Klepto, fixed track elevator, triplet butterflies, Yoshi. In fact, scuttlebugs can even update their home to the death barrier.

Note 42 (2:44:08): It actually rounds down the absolute value. In other words, it rounds towards 0. Ex.: 12.8 becomes 12 and -12.8 becomes -12.

Note 43 (2:49:46): because of the steep slope he was building speed on, he actually first needed just shy of 1 million speed in HMC, then let his speed drop down to 524,300.

Note 44 (2:54:50): This happens because at the start of the frame, Mario is in a landing action, which he can jump out of by pressing A. If he doesn't jump, he immediately enters freefall because he is more than 100 units above the ground. After he enters freefall, he will ground pound if Z is being pressed. If he does neither, the first quarterstep of movement brings him onto the floor, which ends the movement on the first quarterstep, and into the ceiling, which keeps Mario stays in place.

Note 45 (2:56:08): His decision that all ABC videos on his main channel should have commentary was sort of "officially" taken immediately after making two commentated ABC videos: Stomp of the Thwomp 6xA and Watch for Rolling Rocks 0.5xA.

Note 46 (2:58:02) : While this discovery from June 2015 did eventually lead to piecing together Watch for Rolling Rocks in 0.5 A presses, it wasn't until October that a proper setup to raise a scuttlebug for Watch for Rolling Rocks was actually developed.

Note 47 (3:04:41): The improvements were officially incorporated in the ABC A Press count on January 13th, but Pannenkoek actually held on to them for five more months until June, when he finally released unpolished versions of the videos to his UncommentatedPannen channel. In fact, the videos presented here were released in 2018.


Chapter 6 - The Modern Era: Conquering Tick Tock Clock

Note 48 (3:11:12): More information in Walls, Floors & Ceilings: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnU7DJXiMAQ&t=42s
A more accurate visual can be found in Walls, Floors & Ceilings Part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1kbABTyeo8

Note 49 (3:12:13): It also calls RNG to determine a short waiting period between swings, but it's irrelevant in this case.

Note 50 (3:12:59): The force shown here is not an accurate force acting on a swinging pendulum, but it accurately represents the effective force used by the game's physics. The pendulum experiences a fixed angular acceleration of 13 on a slow swing and 42 on a fast swing, which is different than what would be observed in reality.

Note 51 (3:14:16): Because there are only two possible speeds (13 and 42), and because the same speed twice in a row returns the pendulum to exactly the same point, there is no choice other than to alternate between slow and fast until the middle point crosses angle 0. So, there is no way to make that any faster - it simply happens to take 291 swings.

Note 52 (3:15:11): The function has a couple of failsafe mechanisms that prevent any small closed loop from existing, but also incidentally shorten the loop a little bit due to an overzealous failsafe. On paper, the RNG function would have a loop of length 65534 and a loop of length 2, but in practice, the long loop is cut a bit short. More information: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MiuLeTE2MeQ

Note 53 (3:18:02): STROOP was initially created by danebou and came into existence on June 13, 2016, but pannenkoek took over the project for most of 2017, 2018 and onwards.

Note 54 (3:22:30): Some of you may have noticed that since no hat in hand is available and because instant release drops the bob-omb, there should be no way to bring a bob-omb directly to a preset HOLP in Tick-Tock Clock. This run used a trick found in 2021, which will be talked about later.

Note 55 (3:23:00): The strategy was invented by ds273 and executed for the first time by BillyWAR.

Note 56 (3:28:53): While the gradient of the slope is important, the friction coefficient is actually the biggest factor. The floor triangle needs to be of an unusually low-friction type, and/or the slope especially steep, for this trick to work. The reason it works on the stalactite in JRB is because when Mario is half-submerged in water, he won't slide off from steep surfaces, so he can punch.

Note 57 (3:30:21): The specific operation that causes the error on Wii VC was converting from a double (64-bit) float to a single (32-bit) float, which is an undefined operation. As such, different processors can process it differently. SM64 typically doesn't use doubles, but a small number of calculations do use them - for example, the oscillation of the BitFS platforms, and the computation of normal vectors of triangles. The glitch is unique to Super Mario 64 on the Wii VC. It doesn't happen on Wii U VC, or in other games on Wii VC.

Note 58 (3:36:05): Also, it's 230 forward speed. Forward speed is much more difficult to maneuver with than negative speed, because forward speed is hard capped on a lot of actions for which negative speed is only soft capped, including diving and running/walking. Therefore, Mario can only turn using text redirection.

Note 59 (3:38:57): The sign is reversed here because for the multiplier to be applied, the stick needs to be held back by some amount. If the stick is held back, the stick angle in relation to Mario's facing angle will always be between 90º and 180º, so the cosine of that angle will always be a negative coefficient. Also, "The multiplier goes down by 1 for every 10,000 speed" is assuming a stick angle of 180º. In reality, it goes down by one multiple of the cosine of the stick angle for every 10,000 speed.

Note 60 (3:40:07): His speed doesn't get capped to -16 because he bonks after a partial movement of just one quarterstep. While the speed doesn't immediately get capped, it does get reversed to -2339. This is not a problem for twirling, but the 10k glitch requires positive horizontal speed, which is yet another reason why a bonk could not have been used to land on the shell.

Note 61 (3:41:14): It's actually sort of a big deal. None of the common cloning glitches can be used: at 0 stars, there's no wing cap for hat in hand, and the clone's destination renders transport cloning and instant release useless. Pannen and Tyler had to resort to Pause-buffered hitstun (PBH), which is the very next glitch being introduced.
By the way, I decided to introduce PBH during the Bowser fight because it seemed like a simpler situation to understand than listing all the reasons why other remote release methods couldn't work for this specific scenario in Bob-omb Battlefield. However, in doing that, I failed to consider that it wasn't strictly required to use it there, because they could always go back to Bob-omb Battlefield after the fight. They used it there for speed and convenience. Because of the reasons previously mentioned, PBH was already required in Bob-omb Battlefield anyway, I simply glossed over it.

Note 63 (3:43:30): Mario needs 45k speed to get out of the hyperspeed punching spot directly into a freefall, which is why the 10k glitch had to be used after this point to reduce Mario's speed to a workable amount. This is why he has to slide, fall, slide again, and then twirl.

Note 64 (3:45:50): Technically, he has 3 frames, but in reality, he can't use them up very well.
	- Frame 1: Mario enters freefall, which cancels the remaining quartersteps of movement, leaving him only one quarterstep of movement to work with.
	- Frame 2: Mario is in freefall with 0 Y speed. Because of quarterstep spacing issues, he uses up only three out of four quartersteps of movement.
	- Frame 3: Mario now yas -4 Y speed, so he can only move by one quarterstep before he's too low to reach the pillar.
In total, he has 6 quartersteps of movement available to him, or the equivalent of 1 ½ frames, and he travels for 5 of them.

Note 65 (3:47:09): If this were out of bounds, Mario would lose his horizontal speed here, but thankfully, ceilings only kill vertical speed and conserve horizontal speed.

Note 66 (3:49:31): Mario's max acceleration is 1.15, but drag takes away 1 speed per frame if his speed is above 32. Because the stick needs to be held at a slight angle, the actual acceleration will be lower than 0.15. The sharper the angle has to be, the lower the acceleration, which limits the top speed.

Note 67 (4:01:41): Objects typically don't push Mario out of bounds, but it can happen in some edge cases. More info in Walls, Floors & Ceilings Part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnU7DJXiMAQ&t=1977s

Note 68 (4:14:22): Mario gets stuck between a floor and a ceiling if they are less than 160 units apart. For the ceiling to squish Mario, it needs to be at most 150 units away. Also, Mario needs to punch to begin walking in mid-air, otherwise he would ledge grab downwards and fall off.

Note 69 (4:16:59): At the time, the plan did not involve BCA and was a lot more complex. The discovery of BCA in May 2021 massively simplified the plan, enough to transform the incomprehensible ramblings of an insane genius into something at least remotely feasible.

Note 70 (4:17:48): Bob-omb spawners load when the bob-ombs unload and vice versa. That behaviour is slightly different from coin spawners, which stay loaded except in Dire Dire Docks and Wet-Dry World.

Note 71 (4:19:28): The overlap is actually 1 unit below, but wall hitboxes only begin 30 units below the actual top of the wall, so the hitbox is 31 units below the treadmill.

Note 72 (4:21:03): In fact, because remote dropping a bob-omb places it at Mario's height, this effectively creates a 4000-unit cylinder around the HOLP where bob-ombs can't be released. The activation radius is a sphere, not a cylinder, but because the bob-omb will always be at Mario's height when he releases it, the full 4000 units of the radius will always be horizontal.

Note 73 (4:27:46): This has since been improved. On July 27th, 2022, Pannenkoek found a setup to use Behind Camera Anywhere instead of Pause-buffered hitstun, eliminating the need for these explosion clones.

Note 74 (4:28:00): Star particle spawners from bonking are unique to the Japanese version, making this strategy J only, but since then, there have been improvements to the route and it no longer requires a star particle spawner. Therefore, it can be done on other versions as well, provided there's no spawning displacement involved.

Note 75 (4:29:33): For Stomp on the Thwomp, the bob-omb needs to be a smaller bloated size, but the idea is pretty much the same.

Note 76 (4:30:23): Meanwhile, until Mario grabs it, the bob-omb is stuck touching both walls at once. Unlike Mario, objects only get pushed by walls once per frame, so it ends up oscillating between the two walls, getting pushed more by the inside wall on one frame, and getting pushed more by the outside wall on the next.

Note 77 (4:32:22): Marbler also helped, but we haven't met Marbler yet. We'll meet Marbler very soon.


Chapter 7 - The Final A press saves

Note 78 (4:36:12): It takes that long because the amount of speed given to the bully is proportional to the squares of the speeds involved. Initially, a collision gives the bully about 5 speed, but at the end, one collision gives the bully 0.048 speed.

Note 79 (4:36:57): The signed 32-bit integer limit, 2^31, is exactly 2^16 times larger than the displacement angle, 2^15. So after 2^16 frames (36.4 minutes), the angle has drifted by 2^16 angle units, or exactly one full turn, and the angle is just shy of 2^31.

Note 80 (4:37:55): This is made more complicated by the fact that because the game uses lookup tables for trigonometric functions, collisions cannot result in every possible angle, only about 10% of angles can be achieved. Finding even collision angles sometimes required waiting for the bully to rotate a bit. Yes, Pannenkoek did use a brute forcer for that process.

Note 81 (4:38:50): Once the bully finds a floor to move onto, before the movement is actually made, friction is applied to his speed. For some reason, the friction coefficient is based on the floor the bully is calculated to move to, but applied before it actually does that move. In this particular case, the coefficient is 0.8, so the bully loses 20% of its speed, causing it to actually end up way short of the elevator. This is clearly an error by the developers but its effect in normal circumstances is negligible.

Note 82 (4:38:59): While it's moving in bounds, the bully's visual position lags one frame behind its real position. This doesn't happen when the out of bounds failsafe is triggered, causing it to visually appear in the same position two frames in a row. When talking about the moment the bully goes back in bounds, I took the liberty of using the next frames for visual clarity. In fact, if you look closely at 5:46, you can see the bully visually appear close to the camera for two frames in a row, but on the first of those frames, its shadow is on the far rock. What's happening is that the bully's real position is over lava on the frame before the bully can be seen. Then, when the bully appears over the lava, its shadow is on the rock, at its real position. On the frame after that, the failsafe triggers again and from that moment onwards the bully appears where it actually is.

Note 83 (4:40:39): The exposed ceiling Mario gets moved into is from the back side of the elevator platform, not the underside. The one right next to where Mario ends up, however, is from the underside of the platform. The underside is not slanted enough to cause a squish push. The check for Mario being moved out of the ceiling only happens on a squish push, which means the underside is no good for squish cancel.

Note 84 (4:41:24): This is because the bully is not fully perpendicular to the collision, which lets him transfer most of his speed to Mario and keep enough to stay hovering (or in this case, zoom across the map twice in half a second).

Note 85 (4:47:32): Technically, you can spawn more than one 100-coin star if you overflow your coins on the Japanese N64 version. But you can't get 65636 coins on Tick Tock Clock - cloning coins adds to the object count, so you can only get 279 coins (when not A-restricted) before you overflow the object count and crash the game. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dokE1J5wlhE&t=1067s

Note 86 (4:51:03): For Mario to be burned, his position needs to be inside the fire's hitbox without Mario's own hitbox touching any of the hitboxes of fire clones later in the processing order. This forces fire clones to be at least 37 units away from each other (the size of Mario's hitbox).

Note 87 (4:51:18): The elevator goes up by 6 units each frame and has a total range of motion of 200 units. When its position exceeds that range, it gets capped at that 200 maximum. Because 200 is not divisible by 6, this leaves two sets of possible positions, one going up and one going down. Furthermore, Mario can touch the fire clone one frame earlier than the optimal frame, which adds a couple more possible heights.

Note 88 (4:53:05): What Note 72 said is especially relevant here. Because remote dropping a bob-omb places it at Mario's height, this effectively creates a 4000-unit cylinder around the HOLP where bob-ombs can't be released. The activation radius is a sphere, not a cylinder, but because the bob-omb will always be at Mario's height when he releases it, the full 4000 units of the radius will always be horizontal.

Note 89 (4:53:58): Again, it's possible to line up the fire clones in sets of 3 by slightly varying their heights and the setup to reach the ledge, lowering the amount of different HOLPs, and by extension, trips up the clock, needed to get past this part multiple times.

Note 90 (4:54:49): This specific nuance has never been particularly relevant in any of the ABC strategies, so it was never brought up until now. More on that in Walls, Floors & Ceilings, starting from 5:00, as well as at 26:42: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnU7DJXiMAQ&t=300s

Note 91 (4:56:14): This rotation is 2048 angle units per frame, or 1/32th of a turn. So, Mario can do a full rotation is just above one second. Also, if Mario is running fast enough and the stick is held more than 90º away from his facing angle, he will start to do a sliding turnaround instead (an action that he can sideflip from).

Note 92 (4:57:57): Normally, Mario can't get pushed around by objects in the punching action, except on the very first frame, which is the case here.

Note 93 (4:58:10): Mario has to spend at least one frame in a grabbing action before he can actually grab an object. If Mario dove directly at the bob-omb, it would take an extra frame to actually grab it, but before he was already punching on the frame before, he can grab it on the first frame of the dive because he was already in a grabbing action. This is the same mechanic behind light Chuckya. For Mario to have enough height to reach the spinner, he needs at least 22 vertical speed, so it was crucial that this dive grab would have to be done in a single frame.

Note 94 (5:00:30): Burning damage depends on the length of time Mario spends burning, which can be minimized by grinding on a ledge. More info on how burning works: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeGNpeFOOCY&t=687s

Note 95 (5:08:32): Technically, it is possible to trigger the flame spitter from below. It might even be possible to get the flame to fall off the ledge, but it's unclear if it's actually possible to get a decent fire bounce out of it.

Note 96 (5:08:39): On December 25th, 2022, pannenkoek2012 managed to get to the mainland using goomba bounces and a misalignment after very extensive RNG manipulation using a bruteforcer. This frees up the star to be used somewhere else, but it's not enough. A 100-coin star cannot possibly be spawned where it is shown in the clip because no coins can be collected there, and even it was possible, Mario would inevitably die in the process.

Note 97 (5:08:49): Sliding speed is preserved on pause exits, and if you enter the map you go to already underwater. The only three examples of that are falling out of Vanish Cap under the Moat, leaving Dire Dire Docks through the Bowser door, and entering the sunken ship in Jolly Roger Bay. Technically, entering the Secret Aquarium also preserves sliding speed, but here, there is no meaningful way to reactivate it other than a pause exit.

Note 98 (5:10:50): In fact, it's even more annoying than that. The elevator moves down, so at the peak of Mario's height relative to the elevator, Mario is moving down as well. Since the elevator moves in full steps and Mario moves in quartersteps, Mario does have the height to clear the wall for one quarterstep. But on the second quarterstep, he moves down and can no longer clear it. The wall is 50 units thick, which means it takes 100 speed to reach the outer wall hitbox.

Note 99 (5:13:40): The rundown of how it works can be found here: https://pastebin.com/TiCGb954

2023-02-15 update: Treasure of the Ocean Cave in 0.5xA presses (Total 13): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAwienu67cU
2023-10-01 Update: Watch for Rolling Rocks is now possible in 0xA presses in only 7 minutes (Total: 13). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFx7woWkZbc