Fluttering
Contents
How To Flutter
A new video recently uploaded by Trix demonstrates how to flutter optimally in Yoshi's Island. He also discusses how to use Yoshi's eyes as a visual cue to more easily learn the timing for perfect flutters, which are discussed below.
Extended Flutter
An extended flutter is performed when Yoshi bounces on an enemy, and is able to flutter much higher than normal.
There are three ways to maximize the height gained from an extended flutter:
- Hold jump in advance before bouncing on the enemy (Not holding jump results in a much smaller bounce).
- Release jump and manually initiate the flutter around the apex of the jump, rather than just holding down jump and waiting for it to automatically flutter. Or in other words: Do the extended flutter like you would perform a perfect flutter
- Follow the big flutter up with a second perfect flutter.
Extended flutters are used in many levels to reach otherwise unreachable locations. For example, in 1-1 to skip the beanstalk, or 6-4 to travel over the stone column, skipping the need for a key.
The video demonstrates an extended flutter, followed by a perfect flutter as part of the route in 6-4.
Perfect Flutter
Normally, a flutter is done simply by pushing jump and holding it down until a flutter begins. This produces a flutter which both comes out later, and does not give Yoshi optimal height. If jump is manually released right as Yoshi begins to fall, and then very quickly repressed (1-3 frames later), Yoshi will perform a flutter which travels a bit higher up.
This Trick is used to access several locations otherwise too high for Yoshi to jump to naturally, such as:
- The area above the red switch in 2-4
- The last room of the right/down room in 4-4 after you shot the cloud containing the key
- Traveling over the stone column in 6-4
- After obtaining the key in 6-6
Sustained Flutter
Flutters can be chained indefinitely so that Yoshi does not lose height throughout consecutive flutters, in fact, several pixels of height can actually be gained between flutters by doing perfect flutters. This is used to travel across areas where fluttering is faster, such as the long water section in 3-4, the 5-4 Platform Skip or the 6-4 Lava Skip.
Lava Skip
The Lava Skip is a flutter-based skip that "only" saves ~3s but gets you all the swag points! Doing multiple consecutive flutters over such a long period of time takes a lot of practice... but you know the saying: Practice makes perfect! 
5-4 Skip
The notorious 5-4 Skip is by far the hardest Trick in the whole game, way harder than the already hard Lava Skip. It can take a very long time to land it even once, but the time it saves is very huge, making it totally worth learning. There are 4 different ways to do the skip. All of them are hard (Half Skip is a lot easier though).
A timing comparison for the skip in Any%:
- No Skip (Use platform): 2:27
- Half Skip (w/ Shy Guy): 1:31 (-56s)
- Half Skip (No Shy Guy): 1:24 (-63s)
- Full Skip (w/ Shy Guy): 1:10 (-77s)
- Full Skip (No Shy Guy): 1:03 (-84s)
Full Skip saves ~60s in 100%, whereas Half Skip would save ~40s.
