MCMoo Shroo | [TAS] SMG2: Starshine Beach Galaxy - Purple Coin Beach Dash (0x A Presses) [M] @mcmooshroo2974 | Uploaded 2 years ago | Updated 1 minute ago
Ok I have time to give this star a thorough explanation so here goes:

This star was like the easiest RTA (1x) for a long time where you just jump into the star at the end, but it had serious potential to be lower with all the ledges, objects, and Yoshi. As far back as 2017, Annoying thought it would be possible to bounce off a Smeech or chain several of them together from further away to grab the star.

By 2018, we brought it down to 0.5x by Yoshi fluttering off the dock, landing on a lured Smeech, and fluttering into the star. I think this was proven by Bloopiero but I can't find the video for it if there was one.

In 2020, Salad mentioned 2 Smeeches were probably enough to grab the star with just an airspin to start it off, and talked about how Smeeches have a weird home that they return to after they chase Mario. I'm not sure what his actual plan was after luring both the Smeeches but it was probably similar to what was done in this video.

Anyway, tonight I independently discovered you could push Smeeches if you were behind them (already known), push them if you already had a Smeech on Yoshi's nose (probably already known), and that you could turn Smeeches to face whatever direction you want by luring them away from their home and having them fly back in the desired direction (probably known by Salad). I was just the person to put all these together to grab the star 0x

So that is the evolution of this star but the actual tech is pretty cool too. All of it is pretty simple and demonstrated in the video so I won't talk about too much though. First, you just play the star as normal, bait 2 Smeeches to face away from the star, grab a third Smeech, push the first 2 to the other side of the star (so they are now facing it), get hit to get off Yoshi, airspin onto the first Smeech, land on the second to get more distance, and grab the star.

You don't need to trigger the Smeech to get it lower to the ground to land on it or do the HGP off the second. Those were just for extra style points.