Here's the thing: I played the PCE CD port the last few days and had a blast - until I got to the final boss. As of now I'm convinced that it is completely luck-based whether you succeed or fail. I can consistently get to him with five lives, a full health bar, an unscathed armour and with the best weapons in the game and he still won't die. Since his laser beams are unavoidable most of the time (I mean it, the patterns tend to overlap in a way that they are impossible to dodge) and each hit will drain about a third of your health it's just a matter of time before he murders you. You can camp in the upper left and right and pray that he moves to a position from where he cannot hit you, but in my experience that is not a reliable way.
I saw a few videos of the arcade game and it seems to be pretty identical here, too. I get the impression that you simply have to hope for the best, sometimes you might be able to kill the ActRaiser 2 master in time, sometimes he gets you no matter what.
Surely, there must be way to consistently beat that terrible monster. Once I got extremely lucky and he just spammed his laser over and over again even though he couldn't hit me from that angle, but the other nine times or so he simply wiped me out. I'd love to know a fire-proof way (if there is one) to handle this douche bag, I really love this game otherwise.
