Lethal Enforcers

Lethal Enforcers was released as an arcade machine back in 1992 by Konami. It was one of the first shooting games released for the arcade and was the forerunner of games such as Time Crisis and Virtua Cop. It had two revolver-shaped light guns known as the Konami Justifier, player one in red/pink and player two in blue.

The game itself was one of the first rail shooters, that is the scenery moved along and you took shots at any baddies that appeared. The graphics were all digitised, with very few (maybe 2-3) frames of animation if they were going to move. This aside it was great fun to play.

The home console market saw versions released for the Super NES, Sega Megadrive and Sega Mega CD. Much later there was also a SONY playstation version which featured this original game plus Lethal Enforcers II: Gunfighters, which used a western scenario. Lethal Enforcers was an iconic game in the arcade and put Konami at the top, the machines took lots of cash and can be found fairly easily today. The main problem is that they were very popular so they took a battering and finding one in good order is not easy.

I bought my Lethal Enforcers cabinet for just £50. It was complete and mostly intact, with the usual signs of wear and tear for a machine of this age, but in a "not working" state. On delivery I took off the back cover and plugged in everything that may have come loose.

I plugged in the cabinet with a "door-cheat" in place so I could see anything that might short inside and after a little hiss was greeted by an almighty crack and spark of bright blue electricity from the end of the tube to the chassis. At this point I noticed a bulge in the anode cap. The voltages inside a monitor are very dangerous and can kill so a few precautions are needed. First I made sure that I had a good connection to the monitor frame (chasis). This was done bay simply sanding back a small area to bare metal so a clip can be attached.

Next I discharged the monitor to make sure there was nothing left to make me jump. This is done by grounding the anode, here using a screwdriver connected to the clip on the frame. This is not the recommended method and I should really have used a professional discharge probe, available from all good electronics shops.

There was however, only a little electricity left in the monitor and only a little pop was heard so I removed the cap for inspection. Sure enough the small metal circle (looks like a washer in the pic below) that keeps the clips in position had come loose and was allowing the cap to short. The brass end that you can see should sit flat in the rubber cap and be held in place by the washer. Only the small wires that clip the cap to the tube should be visible.

This is a fairly simple repair, I re-seated the metal clips in the metal circle, cleaned the inside of the cap and the area of the tube that it attaches to and replaced it. After a few minutes of charging the screen came on and there was the small orange glow in the neck of the tube that shows it's alive, hurrah!

Next we come to the power supply unit, the power to the monitor was clearly fine, and the marquee light was operational but there was no sign of life from the PCB. I took out the power supply frame and tested the input and output for the JAMMA power supply (that's the silver box with all the holes in). The input was fine but nothing was coming back out, no 5v + or - and no 12v. After a few continuity checks and quick check inside I decided for speed that I'd just replace the unit so I ordered a MWP-606 JAMMA arcade power supply.




Once the new power supply was fitted, the screen text told of a start-up error so I reset the board using the PCB mounted test switch (marked TEST SW in the pic below) and everything started correctly.

If you hold down the same reset switch on the PCB while you start the machine you get a special diagnostic mode. This allows you to test the guns and it showed that the blue (Player 2) gun was working fine but missing its targets, the player 1 gun was not firing at all. I cleaned the glass (both sides), the CRT screen, the mirror, and the lenses of both guns. I checked the wiring for player one's gun and found that it was simply unplugged!

The holsters were quite rough so I sanded then back to metal and resprayed them with about 10 coats of black hammerite. The control panel artwork was a bit rough but after seeing the repro ones I decided to just clean it up as best I could and add a protective plastic layer.

The guns never worked as expected, well they did but always a little "out" and feel very worn, so I decided to replace them with a new set of HAPP guns. I've also added some extra games to the cabinet and will be making these switchable from the front of the cab. On this machine you can play:

Lethal Enforcers
Lethal Enforcers II : Gunslingers
ZeroPoint

The only issue with adding new games is that the cabinet was designed as a mirrored cabinet, to give it depth. Zero Point doesn't have the ability to use a mirrored cabinet in it's options. Lethal Enforcers I & II both support mirrored or none-mirrored monitors though so I just needed to flip the yoke to display a none mirrored image and set all the games to use it. Yoke flipping was very easy as the cabinet has a Hantarex Polo monitor which means it's simply a case of moving the yoke connector from one position to another! Swapping the boards is still a manual process at the moment, only made easier by some long JAMMA extension cables.

Game Screenshots