Lethal Enforcers is inspired by cop films like 'Dirty Harry' and 'Lethal Weapon'. The Justifier lightgun peripheral was clearly modelled on Harry Callahan's Magnum.
There are four levels usually split into three stages. It is fairly basic with you shooting the bad dudes and avoiding clipping the hostages and innocent bystanders. With it being an arcade game it uses a few cheap tricks: enemies popping up very quickly, innocents that look similar to bad guys meaning you often shoot them by mistake, small hitboxes due to enemies being obscured by objects such as windows. This is fairly standard in lightgun games and the game is much fairer than 'Revolution X' (1994) and 'Terminator 2: The Arcade Game' (1991), but not as easy as 'Virtua Cop' (1994) or 'Time Crisis' (1995). The game relies on memorising the placement of enemies and they are non-randomized which makes it easier on repeat playthroughs. I would rank is as medium bordering on tough difficulty.
The game uses digitized photographs similar to 'Mortal Kombat' (1992) . The game looks rough around the edges now, but at the time it was state of the art. The only other technology around at the time capable of producing realistic live action footage was Laserdisc, which was incredibly expensive. Laserdisc was used for the shooting games such as: 'Mad Dog McCree' (1990) and 'Who Shot Johnny Rock? ' (1991). That said the graphics still hold a nostalgic charm.
The music is functional and not that memorable. The sound effects are great. Every gun sounds different and is suitably beefy. The digitized speech "eat lead, copper" is clear and adds to the B-Movie action film feel.
Lethal Enforcers is a total classic of the lightgun genre. It's been surpassed by the likes of 'Virtua Cop' which took inspiration from Lethal Enforcers. And as far as digitized lightgun games go, I don't think it is as much fun as 'Area 51' (1995). It is well worth a playthrough and an experienced player should be able to complete it in under an hour. It was ported to Super NES, Sega Genesis, Sega CD and Playstation 1.
