The ending isn't much to write home about, really.
Catherine escapes from Ghost City, and is never heard from again...
(Although I like to think Catherine would later grow up to become Kate Green from House of the Dead 4.)
With Ghost City banished into the ether, Laser Ghost has been defeated.
As for my final thoughts, Laser Ghost definitely earns its three-star score, but man, I wish I could give it more. I'd love to be able to say it's a five-star game that you need to get a copy of now (as well as a Light Phaser and a CRT monitor that will let you use the gun) just because the genre it belongs to is seen so very rarely, and it's even rarer to see it done well. The basic mechanics of the game are pretty solid, the Light Phaser is surprisingly accurate (and shits all over the NES Zapper if you ask me), and while Catherine will often blunder into bad situations that aren't that easy to rectify without hurting her yourself, for the most part she's fairly clever and will let you get on with it unabated. Admittedly, the fact that your shots will hurt her can be an annoyance (especially when fighting the monster cars) but it's a very important element of the game- as well as preventing you from speeding through the level, it forces you to actually be careful with your shots, and to shoot the poor waif only when you really have to. It adds a wee bit of strategy to the proceedings.
While the mechanics work well, it's the level designs themselves- and the difficulty curve- that lets the game down as a whole, because they're all over the shop. A bit like Marchen Maze, really! The game starts out kicking your ass (the bat-clouds will get you every time, as will the sliding walls), then gets stupidly easy (Chapters 2 and 3 are nothing, really), then violently see-saws between piss-easy (the first section of Chapter 5) and piss-hard (the second section of Chapter 5), culminating in a final boss battle that the rest of the internet has, justifiably, called unfairly hard. There's no happy medium here, and coupled with the game's reliance on shock-tactics and using the same enemies over and over again (bats are the worst offenders, but the monster car gauntlet in Chapter 5 is brutal too) it often means the game's a bore to actually play. When it works- which happens about half of the time- it works pretty well, it's just the rest of the time it feels like it needed some fine-tuning before release.
Essentially, it's a game that's got moments where the concept shines through, in spite of it all...
And, really, that makes it the hardest kind of game to review.
Better luck next time, Sega!
And now, it's that time, folks!
EXTENDED PLAY!
Now, I said on the first page that this Master System version of Laser Ghost has nothing to do with the arcade game.
Mechanics-wise, that's true, but a few characters in the arcade game made it to the MS version.
First, the monster-cars that attack Catherine in Chapter 5 appear in Mission 1 of the arcade game as minor enemies.
Next, the hanging corpses seen throughout Chapter 6 appear from Mission 5 onwards in the arcade game- here they try to lick you.
Finally, a blonde girl in a pink dress that looks a bit like Catherine is kidnapped at the beginning of the arcade game, and is shown at the end of every mission. Sure, the resemblance is essentially 'they've both got blonde hair' but I'll take what I can get. Upon reaching the end of Mission 6, you find the girl... As she hulks out (in a form that vaguely resembles Crazy Fat Ethel) and tries to kill you with a hatchet. Then she mutates again into something that cannot be unseen (sorry for scarring you, everyone). The game ends with the girl turning back to normal and returning home. Whether this is actually supposed to be Catherine or it's just a coincidence is something that we'll never know or care about.
Speaking of something no-one in their right mind would ever care about...
Poltergeist III, released in 1988, was the final title in the paranormal-horror series, mostly known for its poor reception amongst critics and the box office, as well as the sad and untimely death of the main star of the series (Heather O'Rourke, who died aged 12). Now, what's this got to do with Laser Ghost? Well, I found this YouTube video and this comment on the Mean Machines Archive (which is actually cited as a reference on the Wikipedia page for Poltergeist III, which I think says it all about Wikipedia) which both seem to be from the same person, that claim the game is a massive rip-off of the film... To the creepy point where the user believes Heather O'Rourke is actually in Laser Ghost, 'playing' the 'part' of Catherine. As well as being possibly the worst way to frame a review/play through of Laser Ghost it got me thinking- are there really any similarities between the two?
Fortunately, I happen to own a copy of Poltergeist III on DVD, but I hadn't watched it. Until now.
Honestly, there's only two (2) things that really seemed to be pinched by Sega for Laser Ghost. For a start, Catherine kinda maybe sorta looks like Carol Anne, the main character of Poltergeist III. Obviously, Carol Anne was in the first two Poltergeist films, but along with the blonde hair it's her clothes in this particular instalment- the red pyjamas, mostly- that Sega decided to nick for Catherine. The similarity is fairly striking at first, but it's one of those things where the more you look at it, the less convincing it becomes. If the idea's in your head it makes total sense, but on closer examination, it's just a mild resemblance, know what I mean?.
The only other part of the movie that made me think of Laser Ghost was the parking garage scene, where Carol Anne's aunt and uncle are attacked by possessed cars- this is sorta similar to Chapter 5 where Catherine is attacked by living cars... But you could just as easily say that this encounter was inspired by the Section 6 boss in Beast Busters, which is a possessed armoured vehicle that slowly turns into a monster. Read that last sentence again, by the way- isn't that simply the most hilarious boss battle idea ever?
Anything beyond that is spurious at best- there is a scene of Carol Anne stepping into an elevator that's kinad seen in Chapter 6 of LG, the opening shot for Chapter 5 uses a lot of mirrors which are a big part of the film, and Chapter 7 is called The Final Chapter, which was, at one point, a subtitle for the film (at least in Australia, although I can find no proof beyond IMDB)... The YouTube video also claims that Bruce Gardner (Carol Anne's uncle) appears as the cyclops in Chapter 6 (at a real stretch, maybe) and Rev. Kane (the main antagonist) appears as the hanging corpse in the same chapter (absolutely not), but honestly, saying that the game is a complete rip-off of the film strikes me as a bit... Odd. You really, really have to buy into that idea heavily for the connection to make sense, I guess.
Incidentally, Poltergeist III is a kinda shitty film.
Watch it only for Tom Skerritt's hilariously over-the-top performance.
Well, that's one of thirteen Light Phaser games dealt with.
We'll probably never cover the others, but I think Rescue Mission has got a slim chance.
Begone, foul spirit, and trouble us no more! Go back, back to Hell!