"...And it is ALWAYS Stars."
A Plot Coupon (not just an arbitrary Power-Up) that is shaped like a star—symmetrical, five-pointed, and shiny. Floating, spinning, twinkling, shooting, and granting Three Wishes are optional.
Examples:
Anime & Manga
- Spy X Family has Stella Stars, badges awarded by Eden Academy to students who get exceptional grades or perform good deeds outside of school. Anya's goal is to obtain eight of them so she can become an Imperial Scholar and her parents will be invited to an exclusive meeting where the reclusive antagonist Donovan Desmond will make a rare appearance.
Non-Fiction
Video Games
- Scribblenauts has Starites.
- Braid: the super top secret 'what-do-you-mean-there's-hidden-stars' hidden stars.
- Night Sky has similarly hidden stars (but at least you get a mark on the map screen to show you where in the world they are).
- Glider PRO: The goal of the game is to find all the spinning Magic Stars.
- Super Mario Bros.:
- Platform games:
- Super Mario 64, Galaxy 1 and 2, and every Mario Party up until and including Mario Party 8 (but then brought back in Mario Party: Star Rush and onward): Power Stars. The goal is to collect these.
- Super Mario Sunshine: Shine Sprites. Unlike other examples, these have 6 points around a circle, creating more of a sun shape, but the coloration, sound effects, and animation is almost identical to stars in other games so it evokes the same principle.
- Super Mario 3D World: Green Stars. They differ from Power Stars because, in regular levels, Mario and his friends have to continue progressing in the levels as they collect them until reaching the flagpole, instead of calling it a day when they collect a star.
- In Super Mario Odyssey the collectibles are Power Moons instead of stars or suns, however, they take the shape of Power Stars in the Mushroom Kingdom, complete with the Super Mario 64 victory jingle.
- Mario Pinball Land: Even more Power Stars.
- Almost every Mario RPG.
- Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars has you locating the seven pieces of the broken Star Road. Both the individual pieces and the reassembled Star Road are star-shaped.
- Paper Mario makes you rescue the seven Star Spirits.
- Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door has you locating seven Crystal Stars.
- Super Paper Mario is an aversion; it has heart-shaped coupons.
- Paper Mario: Sticker Star both averts this ''and'' plays it straight. The main coupons required to move on with the story are the six crown-shaped Royal Stickers, which fell from a star-shaped Sticker Comet. Apart from that, each Level Goal is a star-shaped Comet Piece.
- Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga has you collect the four pieces of the Beanstar after it shatters. The pieces combine into a star shape.
- Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time has you collecting the six pieces of the shattered Cobalt Star. Again, the pieces combine into a star shape.
- Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story has the three Star Cures.
- Surprisingly for the series, Mario & Luigi: Dream Team manages to avert this, breaking the Star-Shaped Coupon streak the other games had going.
- Paper Mario: Color Splash: Mini-Paint Stars and giant-sized ones.
- Platform games:
- Kirby games:
- Dream Land: Sparkling Stars.
- Dream Land 3: Heart Stars (The Power of Love: now in star form!)
- Squeak Squad: Star Seals. Plus the Warpstars used for level transitions in many Kirby games.
- Guitar Hero has five available per song (sometimes per difficulty as well) though only some of the games in either series actually require them to advance the story. Guitar Hero 5 awards a sixth star for a perfect performance, and Warriors of Rock lets you earn up to 40 stars in certain modes.
- Rock Band, being extremely similar to Guitar Hero, also has stars as a measurement of your performance. Perform exceptionally well and you get five golden stars!
- In the Groove has stars representing the very highest grades, which wouldn't count except it also keeps count of how many stars you have, and getting them again on the same chart doesn't increase the number.
- The entire point of Hoshi Saga is to find the stars hidden in each level.
- The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword (a more minor example): the key that grants access to the second dungeon.
- In Mayhem in Monsterland for the Commodore 64, Mayhem has a quota of magic stars to collect in each "happy" level, with each large star being worth as much as ten small ones.
- The Talos Principle: Collecting all the stars required to access the areas where the white sigils can be collected, which is required for the Blessed Messenger ending. Some of them are notoriously hard to get, as it requires lateral thinking.
- Nobody Saves the World Nobody collects Star Charges for his wand by completing side quests. The Star Charges are turned in to access plot-important dungeons.
- The game Wire Way has small star collectibles called Elan. Some levels require a set number of Elan to be collected before you can complete them. Collecting 10 Elan in a level gives you the option to temporarily go into Wired Up mode. There's also a rarer version of Elan called "Super Elan". Super Elan is bigger and more powerful than regular Elan and can even allow people who obtain it to undergo drastic transformations.
Western Animation
- Winx Club:
- Third season: In "The Red Tower", training against magic-nullifying creatures makes Bloom's Enchantix's weaknesses all the more evident. As a result, the girls set out to seek the mythical Water Stars, which contain a magic essence that wins the Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors against the Dragon's Flame, hoping to finally defeat Valtor. As their name indicates, the Water Stars are star-shaped, jeweled artifacts that can only be activated by Bloom. When used against Valtor, it's an instant trump card that also leaves Bloom briefly out of commission.
- Fifth season: As it's typical for the series to reuse characters and props liberally, what used to be the Water Stars is now the Sirenix Boxes. To aid them in their high-stakes quest for the Sirenix transformation, the Book of Sirenix gifts the Winx six star-shaped boxes containing small guardians. These nymph-like creatures are powerful enough to grant them an intermediary (but very useful for water environments) transformation called Harmonix. They also give hints to the girls when they are stuck trying to crack one of the Book's puzzles. Finally, the Guardians of the Sirenix also have free access to the Infinite Ocean, a place the girls can't access for most of the season.
