Chapter 4 is next- the Sinister Swamp, ooooooooooh- and... It's very similar to the last chapter.



Well, it starts a little differently, as there's some spooky faces in the water in the background that spit extremely harmful drops of water into the air (they're small, but easily dealt with), but then the blue ghosts come back. Take the same approach as in Chapter 3, as they can hit you twice if you're not careful, and watch out for the ones that appear from behind. After that, there's an extremely short encounter with the apples again, all of which be taken out at once with a Special Shot if your timing is right.



... Yeah, this stage is a bit of a bore. It doesn't help that the swamp looks almost the same as the last stage. It certainly doesn't help that in the second screen, after an item cache in the form of gravestones, a slow but steady stream of bats attacks you- this is one of the most aggravating parts of the game as they come one by one and send Catherine flying, and it's especially difficult if you're playing with a Light Phaser. The best advice is to look at where my shots are in the screenshot above- a little up and a little to the right of Catherine- and keep firing on that spot. The explosion your shots cause should be big enough to catch the buggers before they slam into the poor waif's face. Hopefully. Again, a terrible way to play a lightgun game, wouldn't you agree?



After the bats, we get a new boss to fight, and it's Bongo-Bongo from Ocarina of Time some giant disembodied HANDS! They'll move up and down the screen slowly, and if Catherine happens to walk past them as they're in range, they'll grab her and slowly drain her energy. Shoot the hand to free her, natch. The hands are probably the easiest boss in the game, as all you need to do is pummel the hand that Catherine's walking towards, and shoot her away if she's getting too close to one. They don't take many shots to die (they fall off the screen, like they're the hero of a platform game from the 90s) and you have plenty of time to give them a shower of buckshot. Just make sure Catherine doesn't get caught!



.. .And the second you're done, HELLO BATS HOW ARE YOU NICE DAY TO GET SLAUGHTERED WOULDN'T YOU SAY

The technique here is the same- aim above and to the right of Catherine. Keep firing! As much as you can!



Then you fight the hands again.

It's exactly the same as before. Shoot them. Keep Catherine away from danger.

Snooooooooore. What a dull stage, eh?



Well, wake up, punk- Chapter 5 sees us entering Ghost City itself.

Get ready for the most punishing chapter yet.



If you think I'm exaggerating, this cloud of bats is the very first thing to attack you.

Yeah. They're not kidding this time.



This first section is the easier of the two, despite this utterly brutal start- while clouds of bats will continue to attack you when you're near any open doors, the other two threats here aren't nearly as annoying. First, there's the cars that drive on from both sides of the screen- you can see them coming from miles away, and they're huge targets, so cap them once and they'll be sent flying (and if you miss, Catherine will be the one going for a ride). The other hazard comes in the form of two small earthquakes- the ground won't give way, but some of the buildings evidently will as debris starts falling from the top of the screen. Only a few rocks fall each time, so you should be able to handle it. If you don't, Catherine will cry when she's hit by them, and we don't want that.



The next section is a real test of your mettle, though! And your patience. The runaway cars and falling debris are gone, replaced by four- count 'em, four- monster cars you have to fight one-by-one, split up by bat-spawning doors. They start out as normal cars, but slowly make their way into the foreground and spring to life (make sure Catherine's as far away from them as possible, because if they turn into monsters on top of her, there's nothing you can do to stop her getting hurt) where they'll jump around the screen erratically. You need to shoot them right in the mouth to hurt them, and when they get shot they'll be sent flying even higher, which means they'll spend a lot of time off-screen- be ready for them because if they slam into Catherine on their way back down, they'll take a whole heart away.

If we ignore the final boss for a second, this is the hardest section of the entire game. If you don't die anywhere else, you're going to die here. Is it because the bats constantly take you by surprise, no matter how many times you play this part of the game? Is it because that you have to fight four of the hardest non-boss enemies in a row? Or is it because you have to hurt Catherine just to get her out of the way of the monster cars before they transform? Answer- all of the above. This is also the point where the game really starts to wear thin- lots of shock-tactics and reusing the same enemies over-and-over again has a tendency to do that, you know. Utterly, utterly hateful.



Persevere, though, and you'll get off the city streets and into the (relative) safety of...



... BEYOND HORROR HOTEL (aka Chapter 6). Let's go!



Chapter 6 is the last proper stage, and starts with absolutely no bats. Instead, the hotel staff (who are also cyclopes- yes, that is the plural) emerge from behind the front desk and throw their eyes at you- they'll home in on you, but unlike the bats, if you get hit they won't swerve around for another pop at you. Still, there's enough time to shoot them, which is more than I can say about the enemies that appear once you're past the front desk- the purple ghosts. These guys attack in tightly-knit groups of three and come from both sides, so either shoot them as fast as you can, or get that Special Shot ready and waiting. Just a good thing they don't chase after you like the bats.



Shoot the elevator door at the end of the room and we're done here.



The next floor neatly sets the pattern for the rest of the stage- Catherine slowly makes her way down the halls of Beyond Horror Hotel, mostly being attacked by doors. Seriously, shoot all the doors that appear until they fly off screen, because if you don't, they'll knock Catherine back and the doorways start spewing out spiders and bits of fluff at an alarming rate. This can be fatal! However, if you shoot the doors on sight, Catherine gets attacked by these projectiles from behind instead, which is slightly more manageable. This door-shooting business is constantly interrupted by hanging corpses that start spitting spiders and frighten Catherine so much she gets catapulted across the screen (fortunately this doesn't hurt her). You have to blast these corpses apart piece-by-piece from the bottom upwards (which is amazingly grim for a Master System game) which helpfully kills the spiders they're spewing at the same time.



The next floor is exactly the same, but the doors attack from behind instead. So watch out for that.

(This also means that you'll never be attacked by the door-fluff from the front, which is helpful.)



And the next floor is probably the easiest of the four sections in this stage- it's all hanging corpses and a few spots where four small spectres materialise above Catherine and slowly make their way towards her. This is absolute child's play compared to the rest of the chapter (hell, even the rest of the game) and if you die here, well, you either reached here with only one heart in-tact, or you're a bit shite with the Light Phaser. But then again, if you're a crap shot, you wouldn't have made it here anyway, so... Just keep Catherine safe, destroy those corpses and we'll be at the end of this chapter in no time.



Chapter 7- not listed in the manual- is just one boss fight (the final one, natch) and it's a doozy.

How difficult is the final boss of Laser Ghost?

So difficult that even the guide on GameFAQs admits it's down to luck.

Well, I wouldn't quite say luck, but it is absurdly unfair.



The final fight is between you and the wall. Shoot the window in the background and grotesque faces will start to grow out of the grotesque wallpaper one-by-one- starting in the top-left corner and working their way down, column-by-column, to the bottom-right corner- while spitting purple drops at Catherine. The drops are a non-issue here honestly, so ignore them- your task is to shoot every single face. You cannot miss a single one if you wish to be victorious! And bugger me, that's one hell of a task. If, like we did to get screenshots, you're using a mouse on an emulator, then it's slightly easier, but you still don't have that much time to actually shoot them. If you're using a Light Phaser, then you need to work that trigger finger like Takahashi '16Shot' Meijin and blast those faces off the wall. Blast them until they start crying for mommy.

If you're made of weaker stuff and fail to shoot all the heads on the first go...



The bed in the background stirs to life, housing a particularly unpleasant-looking zombie...

And then the bed starts to fly. All around the room.



This is how the final boss attacks you. With a flying bed.

Surely this is a rip-off of The Exorcist?



If Catherine's hit by this thing as it flies around (it can't hurt her when it's flying with its back to the screen) then she's going to take an absolute walloping- she can take three hits from it, maximum. Unfortunately, it's also incredibly difficult to avoid unless you time it absolutely perfectly and shoot Catherine out of harm's way. Only problem with that is if you shoot Catherine in the wrong direction, you'll hurt her and she'll get hit by the bed, and then you might as well give up. Shit, if you missed the faces the first time, you might as well give up entirely- after the bed stops moving, the faces will appear again, but sometimes they'll appear at random. The bed (or your own shots) will inevitably kill Catherine if you fail again, so I hope you've got at least two credits left

Seriously, this is the most brutal final boss since Psycho Soldier's cruel end battle.

As long as you shoot the faces the first time, though, it can be done. Don't give up!



If you're successful, ol' Bed Zombie rouses from his bed, and the bed gets thrown up into the sky.

As beds possessed by zombies tend to do.

Finally, Catherine's soul is returned. Let's watch the ending!