Catherine

First things first, you have to keep your step count from reseting. Your score will drop to zero when it does, and you will even lose the coins you collected along the way. The gauge under your step count drains over time, and you need to reach a new hight to refill it. This means you have to keep climbing as fast as you can. Retrying from checkpoints will not carry over your step count, so you have to do the entire level in one run. If you don't do this, you won't get a high enough score for the gold prize.

This is easier explained than done. It will require memorization and repeated retries before you get everything perfect. This is very hard and time consuming. If you aren't prepared to spend a dozen (or more likely two dozen) frustrating hours on this, you aren't going to get this achievement. It's that simple. Know what you are getting into and prepare for it.

There are tons of Youtube videos available for puzzle solutions. There are no differences between 360 and PS3 levels so you don't need to worry about which version you watch. It's actually beneficial to watch different people go through levels that you are stuck on so that you can see a variety of ways to get past the puzzles and pick the solutions that work best for you.

Make sure you have filled the alcohol meter in the bar before each stage, as this makes your movements faster.

My best advice is to do these during the actual story, rather than replaying them from your cell phone in the bar. This way you can save your game between levels. This is useless for stages 1 and 8, but very important for the longer stages, like 7 and 9 which have lots of levels to them. Sooner or later you will need to go to work, or school, or sleep, or jail, or someone will just trip over a power cord. You don't want to lose 5 hours of hard work just because you couldn't save the game (and yes, I did spend over 5 hours just on stage 9). You'll never need to go back further than the last confessional, which is where you would have to restart with a retry anyway. Just don't save your game if you didn't get a gold for each level of the stage you're on.

I know this means you have a limited number of retries, but if you grab a pillow before using a retry you actually don't lose any retries. The pillow will be there again the next time, so you can keep going forever. If you can get two pillows before retrying, you will actually gain retries without even advancing past any levels. I had well over 40 retries by the time I got to the end of stage 9. And if you do run low on retries, just return to title and reload your save. I would recommend reloading your game as soon as you can consistently reach the first pillow on a level, that way you can avoid beating a stage with only a few retries left.

I never found a spot where getting the pillows was an impediment to completing a level on gold. They are often next to coins that you want to pick up anyway, or along a faster path if you use the right technique.

Achievement "The Golden Child" - Earn Gold Prizes on all Hard difficulty stages

Guides and videos for all stages can be found on the Catherine Wiki:

http://catherinethegame.wikia.com/wiki/Walkthrough:Overview

Hard mode is quite frustrating: You have less time, NO UNDO, you don't get a bonus at the end of a stage. So basically you have to try for perfect runs and get most of the gold coins (you do not need all of them, most important is the combo bar).

My tip: Do the final stages first and work your way through the stages backwards. Then the worst is over first. Especially Level 9 ist VERY frustrating because of all the random things which can happen. Monster blocks moving in your way, bad luck with random blocks, bad luck with bossattacks, monsters in your way...

Even with the great videoguides you'll have a hard time. Good luck.