As I'm developing my time further, I now start to stumble over certain mechanics that I once used to treat like "when I get it, cool, if not, whatever" but that can ruin my run now timewise. And the most frequent cause would be the wall kicks.

I practiced them quite a while now and can somehow use it in runs, but the outcome of needing 1 to 3 kicks in stage 1-4 to get up or needing 10 to 15 kicks is pretty much random for me.

I wonder if there is a strategy for them to maximise the odds of getting the kick to work. I tried mashing A or just tapping it at certain times within the jump, but I can not figure out a pattern to follow. Sometimes it works, sometimes not.

I also guess some wall kicks are way harder than others. 1-4 I'd would rate pretty hard while the double jump wall kick in 2-7 seems to occur way more often to me. Is it dependant on the terrain or the ledge you try to get on with the kick ?

E.g. I find that getting up 2-7 is way easier than getting up 7-2 while they kinda share the same conditions, it's only a jump off the screen edge.

Maybe you could enlighten me on that topic. Thanks in advance :)

I kind of mentioned it the other day when we were talking about it, but a somewhat in-depth explanation would go something like this:

There are two parts to the walljump: the angle/distance in which Mario approaches the wall, and the jump itself. A good example here is 5-3, where you want to walljump with only a tile of space to backflip from. There's a certain spot (possibly a pixel?) where you can get it, which leads me to believe that you can get the walljump from certain distances only. You'll know if Mario jumped from the right angle/distance if he "turns to the right" as he hugs the wall you're trying to jump from. If Mario's sprite doesn't change so he faces right, the angle/distance was wrong.

Once Mario get the correct jump into the wall, you have a short window to press the jump button. It's not measured completely but I believe having read somewhere that the window is 3 frames long. This can be seen in Bizhawk if you inspect the memory address for whether or not Mario is in a jumping state; the value will shortly switch from 1 to 0. When it comes to different stages, the stage physics probably change how easy it is to get the walljump. In a stage with wind physics applied it's really easy to get it, but when you do it off an icy flooring such as in 7-2 it's oftentimes more tricky. I don't believe we have looked into this very thoroughly but I'll make a point to look into it more when I'm finished moving.

Doing this trick RTA is pretty hard, and as I've also mentioned before, you just develop a feel for it with lots of practice. We have different methods of getting it; SparkCity mashes the jump button as fast as he can from the moment he executes the backflip, I just press the button once or twice after the initial jump, and I'm sure the others have their own way of dealing with it. My best advice is to spend some time practicing walljumps only so you get used to them, because it really is a trick that everyone does a little bit differently.

I don't know how much help this was to you, but hopefully it's a somewhat thorough explanation of how the mechanics work. :D

This was a well explanation. Thank you. I'll keep practicing :)