Mario backwards long jump and Sonic tricking in Sonic Rush are the same technique at different levels of mastery
Good afternoon, I will now elaborate.
You see, Sonic obviously has a greater mastery of all things speed. It’s what he’s known for; he’s been going fast since before he could eat solid foods. This has manifested itself as a power to not only accelerate up to and beyond the speed of sound naturally, but also the ability to store kinetic energy, a maneuver we have come to know as “boosting”. He’s had this ability for a while now, but it premiered in it’s current form in Sonic Rush. In which, there were a few ways to build this boost energy, but most commonly it could be built up by jumping off a ramp and performing tricks, in which Sonic would vocalize to himself as he moved around, creating and storing kinetic energy.
LIKEWISE in Super Mario 64, Mario is capable of backwards long jumping to build up an uncapped well level of speed. How? Jumping in the air, vocalizing repeatedly, building up kinetic energy.
The primary separating factor is Mario is not nearly as naturally inclined toward speed as Sonic is. He cannot store this kinetic energy, and thus once he has enough it just all gets released at once slinging him with enough energy that he can even vibrate through links between solid objects.
We have never quite seen Mario utilize this power in the same way, but I believe with the proper training, Mario could one day become as powerful of a speedster as Sonic if he really wanted to.
Next up we talk about parallel universes
