Okay, here we go again. I've thought of some more stuff. It's about corner boosting on land.
Why is it that corner boosting is only comfined to underwater? It makes sense to me that it would still work on land. SkamastaG first thought of this, and I decided to do some testing on it. I successfully got what appeared to be a small boost by jumping on the very left edge of an info block with Mario.
Here is a short video (.smv). The boost is hard to see, you may need to watch the video with slowdown or frame advance. This boost is even more apparent when riding Yoshi. A good example of this is Cheese Bridge Area from Fabian's video: when Yoshi jumps on the 3 wooden platforms at the beginning he lands on the far left edge of them and appears to boost forward.
Note that the corner boost seen in the video is Mario jumping on the upper left corner of a solid surface. I'm not sure if these boosts work when Mario lands on the upper right corner of a surface, when he hits the bottom left corner of a surface from underneath, or when he hits the bottom right corner of a surface from underneath. All of these options are worth testing.
Corner boosting may also work with a cape, which would be even more handy for a run. I tried testing this out, but I couldnt ever hit a surface at just the right spot while flying. There are again four options for corner boosting while flying. I'll list them from what I believe to be most probable to giving a boost to least probable: hitting the bottom left corner of a surface from underneath (either while rising as you catch air or falling as you lose air), hitting the bottom right corner of a surface from underneath (while rising), hitting the top left corner of a surface (while rising), and hitting the top right corner of a surface (while falling). All of this is of course with "normal" flying. Note than when I use the terms left and right above, it is from the perspective when Mario is moving to the right.
Corner boosting seems to vary based on the type of surface used, some are better than others. So far, an info block has worked very well. I'd bet the "concrete" ground found in Vanilla Dome and cave/castle levels would work well too.
If anyone wants to do testing on either running corner boosts or flying corner boosts, that would be great.
EDIT:
Here is the video for the corner boosting with Yoshi. As you can see, the boost is even more extreme. I do it from both the top right corner and the top left corner.
EDIT 2: I'm not exactly sure how corner boosting works, but I thought of a way that could save a lot more time than just the 1-2 frames saved during the boost. Lets say for simplicity's sake that the p-run oscillates 44-->45-->46-->45-->44, and so on. If a boost briefly incresases your speed to say 47, than you could start the hopping glitch right as this happened and maintain a speed of 47 throughout the level, which would be even faster than doing the traditional hopping glitch and keeping your speed at 46. The same thing could work for doing the boost with a cape (if this is possible). I'm not sure if the corner boost actually accelerates Mario or if Mario just "teleports" forward a bit, but if it does accelerate Mario using the boost with the hopping glitch could be a significant timesaver. Even if reaping the benefits of the boost isnt possbile if you've already started the hopping glitch, if you got a corner boost early enough in the level it would be worth it to not do the hop glitch right away so you could do the rest of the level at 47 (or even better, 48 or 49, I dont know the actual numbers).
