Lethal Enforcers is the first in a series of arcade lightgun shooters from Konami. It was initially released in 1992 and features digitised photos of people and places, which was relatively innovative back in ’92, but by today’s standards now looks pretty rough.

Like many lightgun shooters it features one or two-player co-op modes, and – rather than having rifle-based cabinet attachments for the guns – it provided both players with Magnum-style handguns that were connected to the cabinet via armoured cables (armoured presumably to stop people from easily stealing them). Both pistols were brightly coloured, red and blue, so that they could not be mistaken for real handguns.

Gameplay is standard lightgun shooter faire, with the on-rails camera always following the same path – pausing in certain places, then scrolling to the next scene – while players shoot criminals and avoid shooting innocent bystanders.

Each player’s handgun holds six bullets and ammo counts are shown at the bottom of the screen. To re-load, players have to point away from the screen and fire. Alternative weapons can be picked up by shooting them as they appear on-screen. Health is represented as stars at the top of the screen, and you lose one of these when you’re hit. If you lose all your stars you die, but can continue by putting more credits in.

While the gameplay itself is still not too bad, the presentation in Lethal Enforcers has not stood the test of time at all well. The digitised characters distort badly as they move around, are poorly cut-out, and the backdrops are mostly pretty bad photographs of dour interiors, streets and alleyways and are about as cinematic as an episode of Quincy. Add to that the fact that many of the villains look like Noel Edmonds (or Ian McShane from the Eighties, if you’re American), and you have something that is about on the level of the film Samurai Cop, in terms of production values…

Things do hot up somewhat when the action changes to a side-scrolling car chase sequence, but the badly-digitised cars don’t do a huge amount to improve the presentation. The foreground girders (that zip past as the cars hurtle down the street) do provide some depth to the scene, but you know you’re clutching at straws when you’re having to praise girders for their effect on the visuals…

Overall, Lethal Enforcers is still reasonable fun to play now, and the terrible graphics and locations do provide some unintended laughs.

See also: Lethal Enforcers II: Gun Fighters

More: Lethal Enforcers on Wikipedia