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Silver Star/Red Coin Stars
AKA: The "how do we increase the game's length without putting in any significant extra work" stars.
You could argue that the One Hundred Coin stars are the same, but at least they don't make you do those before moving onto more stars that actually make you do new things.
Comments
Technically, neither do the Red Coin stars in Super Mario 64, since a lot of the stars can be received in any order. It's just that you miss out on later hints if you don't complete them. Besides, I was pretty much getting the coins on my own anyway, so it didn't feel like an arbitrary lengthener as much as a usual routine.
Though I agree in the cases when they made you get those things to progress. At least Super Mario Galaxy 2 almost completely abolished the Hunt 100 Purple Coin missions and left only Stay On The Path ones.
Getting a star exits you from the level.
The only star that doesn't do that is the 100 coins star. And you gotta also make sure that you don't get your 100th coin while on a slide. I did that once. Un-freaking-able to get that star. So annoying.
Then you can come back here and complain.
...then again SM64 did have an exist, in the form of pausing and exiting when at full health.
Rather than these, there are a few that are simply about finding the star in an unremarkable place through unremarkable means. Those did feel cheap