In the Donkey Kong games, there's always been a mechanic where if you press A when bouncing off an enemy you jump higher. Most of the time this isn't particularly useful, but in some bonus levels it's required to avoid epic fail...
Youtube videos of platformers make them look ridiculously easy.
Anyway, I always thought that to get the extra height you had to press and release A exactly as you hit an enemy, and that there was a very narrow (almost frame-exact) timing window. Except that's almost completely wrong. In reality, you have to be merely holding A as you hit an enemy, the window for when you can start holding the button is frankly massive (up to maybe half a second in advance?), and it doesn't matter at all when you release A. That discovery made that bonus level quite a bit easier... well, it still took me about half an hour of extra attempts to finally reach the end, but at least I could now get past the fourth set of barrel cannons about 30 seconds in.
Youtube videos of platformers make them look ridiculously easy.
Anyway, I always thought that to get the extra height you had to press and release A exactly as you hit an enemy, and that there was a very narrow (almost frame-exact) timing window. Except that's almost completely wrong. In reality, you have to be merely holding A as you hit an enemy, the window for when you can start holding the button is frankly massive (up to maybe half a second in advance?), and it doesn't matter at all when you release A. That discovery made that bonus level quite a bit easier... well, it still took me about half an hour of extra attempts to finally reach the end, but at least I could now get past the fourth set of barrel cannons about 30 seconds in.