Goomba Springboard

""Hey! Did you just step on me?!""

- Lt. Gaia, Mobile Suit Gundam

A peculiar property of Jump Physics and the Goomba Stomp, where stomping on an enemy - any enemy - lets you bounce upwards to greater height than your normal jump permits. Enemies in these games must have rubber bones or something.

Typically, to perform this technique, the player must be holding the Jump button when the character lands on the Mook. Though in some games, the player may have to do a timely button press as he lands on it or almost immediately after for this to work.

Sometimes, performing a second Goomba Stomp from one of these jumps gets you even more height.

If the game designer has a penchant for puzzles, expect there to be more than a few situations where you need to shepherd enemies to a certain unscalable cliff so you can springboard off them to reach the top. And in harder platformers such as the Donkey Kong Country series, expect to find instances where you have to chain bounce off of a string of Mooks (or maybe even a fast-moving single Mook) just to cross a sufficiently large chasm.

Compare to Cranium Ride where it's about riding on enemies, not jumping from them. One of the methods to do a Spring Jump.


 * Quite common in Super Mario Bros. games... but absent in the first Super Mario Bros, where you gain very little height at all from a stomp.
 * In Super Mario Bros 3, this can be exploited with the raccoon suit to gain extra lives. On the second level, infinite Goombas come out of a pipe at regular intervals. If you time it right, you can stomp enemies one after another, jumping up and floating down onto the next one without touching the ground. After you do this enough, you start getting a 1up for each enemy you stomp. If the level weren't timed, you could do this indefinitely.
 * In the Game Boy Advance remake, you can re-enter the level immediately after completing it, AND the Cap for lives is raised to 999 from 99.
 * Especially common in the infinite number of Nintendo Hard ROMhacks of Super Mario World.
 * Actually required in World 5-2 of New Super Mario Bros. Wii, with giant Wigglers.
 * Also required in Bouncing Training, a level in World 2 of Something. Mario has to jump on Masked Koopa Paratroopa heads to cross the wide gaps and the lava pits.
 * In the Disgaea series, tossing a character onto a friendly monster unit's head will bounce them in the direction the monster is facing. While the technique is called "pass and receive", the best monsters for it are mostly ones that look like they'd have a springy body composition, as opposed to the big, brawny ones, which seems to imply that the characters are simply bouncing off them.
 * One of said monsters, the Eryngya (A mushroom), exists in the Prinny games as little more then a springboard, as it simply stands there and waits to be stomped on, launching you to great heights while remaining unharmed. There is one particular one that uses this springiness against you, though.
 * Donkey Kong Country often involved bouncing off flying enemies to reach secret places.
 * Crash Bandicoot did this with certain enemies to reach extra lives. Some enemies were stunned by a jump attack, allowing you to jump on them over and over again - this was actually required for box completion in Level 1.
 * That's a bit of an understatement. Goomba Springboard is used in many levels (in the various sequels) to get all the crates in a level - sometimes with enemies that die after being bounced on once. If at first you don't succeed... you have to restart the entire level.
 * A primary puzzle element in Braid, which clues you in on this trope by the springy sound made when you bounce off the enemies.
 * An interesting peculiarity is that the bounce is slightly taller then where you started falling from, which means continually bouncing on enemies gives you even more height, and bouncing off an enemy from a platform will get you above the platform even if you couldn't normally jump on the enemy to get up there.
 * Appears in Super Smash Bros. Brawl as the Footstool Jump technique.
 * However, this is averted with actual Goombas in the Subspace Emissary mode, with you getting less and less height from each bounce.
 * A highly useful mechanic in Spelunky, where it prevents fall damage and lets you reach places just out of reach of your unassisted jumps.
 * The faster Sonic is falling in the 2D Sonic the Hedgehog games when he attacks an enemy from above, the higher he bounces. Sonic can jump reeeally high by using this technique.
 * It also works on item boxes.
 * Sonic Spinball forces you to use this on the second level.
 * And in some games, everyone can do this. Related, Amy gains extra height if she hits an enemy with her Piko Piko Hammer. This peaks at if she hits a spring, where she'll jump twice as high as if she had simply jumped on the spring.
 * Eversion allows you to do this with the pseudo-goombas, and it's needed to reach all the gems.
 * In Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island, Yoshi can do a more powerful version of the Flutter Jump after landing on an enemy.
 * The level Fight Toadies with Toadies/Fight Baddies with Baddies requires this technique to complete at least three quarters of the level puzzles.
 * The Sega Genesis version of Ghostbusters—a platform game—featured a helpful ghost called Bouncing Buddy, who could get you out of a tight spot by bouncing you back up to where you fell (!).
 * Possible (and sometimes useful) in High Seas Havoc for the Sega Genesis.
 * The Double Jump method used in Klonoa. You pick up an enemy, carry him around, and then jump off of him while in midair. Requires less precision, but more planning, and it's typically mandatory from stage 1 onwards.
 * Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin has a variant - defeating the first boss gives you a powerup where you can jump on your partner's head to get more height. The Double Jump comes not much later, and you can combine them for a triple jump.
 * Double jumps in the Metroidvania entries of Castlevania (with the exception of Circle of the Moon; also, Aria of Sorrow requires a secondary ability) tend to allow a variation: After the second jump, you can do a kick move that will propel you upward when you contact a foe or destructible object, after which you can do another midair jump. As long as you have enemies and/or destructible objects to propel yourself off of, you can continue "climbing" upward in this manner, though it does require some skill to pull off successfully.
 * The entire point of the flash game Indestructo Tank.
 * In Purple, there's a lot of goodies on high cliffs that need the player to bounce off a chain of mooks to reach them.
 * Bug!! has several segments with them. Some of them are optional but lead to nice goodies, while others are mandatory. And over a giant chasm (See this video here).
 * I Wanna Be the Guy lets you Goomba Springboard off of some Bullets Bill in one screen. These are the only enemies in the game you can Goomba Stomp, and for just this reason.
 * In Legacy of the Wizard, jumping off enemies for greater height is an essential part of strategy, despite the Collision Damage this usually entails.
 * New Super Marisa Land allows you to do this with most enemies.
 * In Fancy Pants Adventures, employing this trope can get you an achievement or allows you to complete a trial; for example, from the first game, you have to continuously spring from one spider to the next to reach the top of a room.
 * In FHBG, touching a stunned enemy propels the player up.