Platform: Sega CD (Mega CD); Sega Genesis (Mega Drive)

Developer: Konami

Publisher: Konami

Release Date (NA): Genesis & Sega CD: 1993

Genre: Arcade Shooter

Nerd Rating: 5.75 out of 10

Reviewed by NerdBerry

Lethal Enforcers in your house?! No friggin’ way! This game was one of the most popular arcade games of the early ‘90s, and for good reason. It was a violent game, and for those of us whose moms and dads didn’t want us to play them, it was all too easy to get down on some gun-shootin’ mischief when our parents dropped us off at the arcade. Some of y’all might be too young to have experienced that, but that doesn’t take away from your own experiences playing games you weren’t supposed to play. For the sake of this review, we’ll stick to the Sega CD & Genesis versions of Lethal Enforcers.

Lethal Enforces made its way to the Sega Genesis and the Sega CD in 1993. The picture quality is moderately more advanced on the Sega CD than the Sega Genesis, but not by much. And there is virtually no other major differences to set the cartridge game apart from the disc game.

The graphics aren’t very detailed (and are actually quite bland). The bad guys are transposed on top of a digitized still image, allowing players to shoot at realistic images of human beings in realistic settings. This was not like a violent cartoon like other games. And with the tangible Konami Justifier revolver pistol used to shoot at the screen, it’s no wonder this game caused wide controversy (even while it was in the arcade, not just at home). The early ‘90s was a very interesting time in video gaming history as Tipper Gore led the hunt against minimizing the “destruction of children’s minds with violent video games and explicit music.” Fuck her. Controversy aside, Lethal Enforcers was an arcade mainstay, but I don’t think it quite lived up to the in-home hype the way Konami or Sega had planned.

Lethal Enforcers is a shooting gallery game, much like when you go to the fair and play the shooting gallery booth where you shoot things that pop up. I’m assuming that’s where this genre title popped up. It requires 1 or 2 players to use either a gun or a controller (2 guns or 2 controllers or a mixture of the 2) and to shoot bad guys who are holding people hostage and performing many other criminal misdeeds around the unnamed city. I mean, these guys must be part of some sort of terrorist gang because 70% of them wear all-black and have ski-masks on while the other 30% have mustaches and/or mullets. That’s some incredible mafia-like organization right there. These bad guys hide behind dumpsters, cars, office chairs, office desks, and anywhere else they can hide. One awful A.I. issue is that they’ll pop up and point a gun at you and either shoot within a nanosecond (always making contact because you’re body is the width of a CRT TV apparently) or they’ll just freeze and do nothing for sometimes as much as 3 or 4 seconds. The inconsistency is pretty annoying. About the whole “getting hit within a nanosecond before having time to react” thing… that just SCREAMS “THIS IS AN ARCADE GAME AND I’M GOING TO SUCK THE QUARTERS RIGHT OUT OF YOUR ASSHOLE!”

In the game manual, you will read:

Arcade Mode Rules:

These are the rules:

1.        Shoot the bad guys. Fire bullets at them and their projectiles: Hand grenades, knives, bazooka shells, etc.
2.        Don’t hit innocent bystanders.
3.        Don’t get shot!

Do you think you can handle that, Rookie?

When you start the game, you start as Patrolman. By shooting enemies and not hitting innocent people, you raise your hitting ratio and can raise your ranking. When two people are playing together, both must fulfill the rank requirements to clear the stage. It is important to work together to beat the enemy. Your rank will drop each time you hit an innocent bystander. When your life drops to zero, the game is over. When you have credit, even if you lose all life, Continue is possible.

This is what the book says. They’re pretty spot on, yet they try to make it sound all ‘90s-ish and super cool. They even list your weaponry in the manual as “Scum Stomping Equipment”… If I weren’t mistaken, I’d say this game was developed by a group of hardass cops who would probably arrest you for throwing a cigarette out the window.

The graphics remind me of most Sega CD FMV games, with that really grainy look, but the background really doesn’t move. The game will start you somewhere and there will be something happening in front of you (bad guys in an office, bad guys in the street, bad guys driving a sedan, etc) but the background stays constant. The sound is very generic and repetitious, but I do like the varying sounds of the gunfire depending on which weapon I have at my disposal. Different weapons will pop up on screen and you have to shoot them to acquire them. These guns hold either 6, 8, 12, or 36 rounds, with the higher capacity guns not allowing for reload.

The Justifier is surprisingly accurate, hitting people almost right on a dime with my shots. I was very surprised and impressed by this. It was a pleasure, to say the least. I did run into a little problem that really messed up my ability to play the game. The bottom right corner of the TV did not register or read any of my shots. It was impossible to shoot in that area. Whenever a bad guy popped up down there, I would try to shoot him but it would not land. The trigger pulled, but it didn’t reload my gun (meaning it somehow knew I wasn’t shooting off screen), and the screen flashed, meaning it registered me pulling the trigger. But it just wouldn’t land on anybody. I’m honestly not sure if this is from my gun, my game, or my TV. I will probably try out another game and see, but my guess is it’s the TV. Aside from that, it’s an accurate gun which provided plenty of bad-guy killin’ time!

Overall, Lethal Enforcers is a fun game. I enjoyed it a lot actually as it really took me down memory lane. The use of the Justifier is nice and it really gives the player a great arcade experience right in their living room! The music is really outdated and the sound effects are okay at best and somewhat limited. I don’t feel that Konami really altered anything when they ported the arcade to the home console. They also didn’t utilize the Sega CD’s full potential of higher quality music/sound or much in the way of FMV. But when you focus on this game as just any old shooting game, it is pretty fun and unique. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll point the gun at your head, and you’ll stomp out the scum! Lethal Enforcers is worth a pick-up if you have The Justifier already, as it can typically be found in the $10-$15 range. The gun is more on the $20-$30 range. I actually found this box set in perfect shape for $35 on Craigslist. It never hurts to search around.

And don’t forget about the sequel (technically it’s a prequel as it takes place in the Old West): Lethal Enforcers II: Gun Fighters!

Nerd Rating: 5.75 out of 10

Reviewed by NerdBerry

Take a look at how ridiculously huge this box is when placed next to this Sega Genesis cartridge: