PixlBit

This game certainly is lethal, but that's not a good thing

Lethal Enforcers is a shooting gallery game that was released for the Sega Genesis and Super NES in 1993. It was developed and published by Konami. As would be expected, this lethal shooter is an arcade port. You can play the game with Konami's gun peripheral, the Justifier (which came packaged with the game), or use the controller (lame!). I imagine the Justifier is very rare now and hard to find; I wonder if any other games actually used it (besides Lethal Enforcers 2 and 3). On the other side, the Super NES version probably made use of the Super Scope. For this review, I played the Genesis version.

Right away you'll notice the terrible digitized graphics of real people (which were no doubt jaw-droppingly amazing in '93). You'll also hear the muffled voices--gasp! Real voices! The levels are missions which are broken up into three sections. The first mission is "Bank Robbery," taking place first in the bank, then just outside the bank, and finally on the road as you shoot at the bad guys while they try to get away in cars. There are five missions total in the game.

The actual shooting part has some problems indeed. First, enemies tend to pop up from the same three or four spots, making it quite monotonous. Thankfully, every now and then a pedestrian will get in the way, usually saying "Don't shoot me" or something before coming onscreen. Don't shoot the pedestrians! This shouldn't be a problem, but in some levels it's hard to differentiate between the bad guys and the pedestrians. In one level a bad guy comes out with his hands up posing as a pedestrian, then pulls out his gun and shoots you (which is clever really). I also remember an instance when a pedestrian popped up very quickly holding something; thinking it to be a bad guy, I shot him! But in actuality he was holding a camera so he could take a picture of me! Stupid pedestrian!

The grainy graphics simply make the game harder as objects onscreen are not always evident. Every now and then a policeman will jump out and say "Hands up!" He stands there for a second, then vanishes, and then a bad guy pops out! Good job, copper! I think the boys in blue are just more opportunities for you to shoot innocent civilians.

During the mission, you'll see flashing guns lying around, such as assault rifles and shot guns. If you shoot the gun, you'll be able to use it as long as you don't get hit. Once you're hit, you go back to your default gun, which is a pistol. You only have six shots before you have to reload. Good thing you can reload in a split-second! Reloading your gun is a pain at first, but after awhile you'll get used to it and it'll become second nature.

Moving the cursor around can be a problem sometimes. Several times I would move the cursor over to the side quickly to get a bad guy, shooting as I went, and somehow I missed the guy completely, then he shot me, I was angry, and I shot him back! This happened way too many times. Some bad guys throw knives which you can shoot out of the air. The bad guys really crack me up. Most of them have these goofy scowls on their faces, and some of them say really cheesy lines when they appear, such as "You can't shoot me!" Really? And then I proceed to shoot him.

At the end of each mission your points are tallied. You see how many hits you got and your accuracy percentage. You also see how many victims you killed. Here's the worst part of the game: if your accuracy is not good enough or if you shot too many victims, you have to replay the level! On the other hand, if you do well enough, your rank moves up (patrolman to detective to sergeant, etc.). That's great, but if you kill one victim, your rank goes down, and if your rank goes down, you have to replay the level. The problem is, you'll be hard-pressed not to shoot a victim due to the grainy visuals and their uncanny ability to jump out and surprise you. This means that beating Mission 2 is a chore! Luckily you can go to Options and set the difficulty to Easy. But who wants to do that?

Final Verdict--3 Stars: It's Okay

LE is slightly fun, but it's more frustrating. So indeed it is lethal--it might raise your blood pressure or give you a headache. The game obviously did well enough to garner two seqeuls, and hopefully they improved on the original. I also need to mention that the game is two player, so you can shoot a friend--I mean shoot with a friend! Seriously though, there are better shooting gallery games out there, so don't waste your time with this one. Shooting ugly bad guys IS entertaining, but the grainy presentation and frustrating controls take the fun down a notch. Not to mention. . . Stupid pedestrian, keep yer head down!

Join me every Saturday as we take a look back at all kinds of retro games, good and bad.