The second Lethal Enforcers, first released into arcades in 1994, goes in a different direction to the first Lethal Enforcers – Lethal Enforcers II: Gun Fighters being a lightgun shoot ’em up set in the ‘Wild West’, in 1873. What hasn’t changed, though, is the fact that Konami used the same technology for digitising the graphics in this game as they did the first, and it still looks pretty dodgy as a result…

Like the first game: Lethal Enforcers II features one or simultaneous two-player first-person gameplay, with each player holding a handgun and shooting bad guys, and also avoiding shooting innocent bystanders wherever possible.

As far as not shooting innocents go: Konami employ the same ‘dirty tricks’ in this as they did in the first Lethal Enforcers. In that: some innocents have been deliberately designed to look like hostiles, and the poor digitisation of the graphics obfuscates the fact that they’re not holding a gun but are made to look like they are… Most innocents are fairly easy to spot, but the select few that Konami included to try to catch you out are very devious indeed… The bugle-playing cavalrymen during the ‘Stage Holdup‘ really twisted my noodle…

What’s new in this are: dual wielding pistols; a Gatling Gun and a cannon (neither really as exciting as they promise to be); shooting holes in water barrels, and the Ennio Morricone-style ‘Spaghetti Western‘ music (including what sounds like a sample from Morricone‘s music from The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, when you drop a coin into the slot).

What’s old in this are: the gameplay (bog standard lightgun rootin’ tootin’ shootin’), and the boss battles (although some boss battles are quite imaginative – like the cannonball-firing bandit at the end of level one – they are still tiresome to overcome and will require numerous credits for most players to defeat).

While it’s fairly obvious that the developers at Konami put a lot of effort into the production of this game (it can’t have been easy getting all the shots they needed and then making them into a game), the video origination of the material is plain to see and it dates the game badly (and it looks terrible in places – especially where characters have been cut-out and superimposed over a background, and they stand out like sore thumb).

That said, I think Lethal Enforcers II is better and more enjoyable than the first Lethal Enforcers, although it’s not a great game nor is it a classic. It just exists and is fun for a short while.

There was one part of the game that did cause me problems, though, which was the shoot-out against three gunslingers at the end of level three (Saloon Showdown). You have to shoot each one in the correct order (ie. the ones that draw first), and if you’re too slow, or shoot any that haven’t yet drawn their gun, then you lose. It took me around thirty tries to get past this part of the game, and when I did beat it it felt like I’d done it by accident… It’s a difficult challenge and was probably a game-ending bottleneck for all but the best (or richest) of arcade players. Thank goodness for MAME, is all I can say…

Lethal Enforcers II is definitely more challenging – and varied – than the first Lethal Enforcers, so it does deserve some credit for that. The stagecoach chase is worth the admission alone.

More: Lethal Enforcers II: Gun Fighters on Wikipedia