As well as giving you more shots to fire off before you have to reload, you can move the gun as you fire off the three-round burst and spread them out to hit multiple targets, which in particular makes bosses and mobs of enemies more of a manageable threat. In terms of the game itself, this means that you have a magazine of 24 bullets to work with, firing 3 bullets every time you pull the trigger and you reload by shooting off the screen. Instead of a service revolver like Lethal Enforcers or a mounted uzi like Operation Wolf, Under Fire is played with a very loose facsimile of a Heckler & Koch MP5, a submachine gun commonly used SWAT teams in the United States at the time of the game's release, and so a fitting choice for the storyline (the original flyer shows the guns as being based on the MP5KA4 model, but it seems the final design was something slightly more generic). The other difference with Under Fire is the gun, something that more directly impacts the game mechanics. With this method, no screen-flashing is needed for the gun to operate, so you won't see it constantly flash! If anything, Under Fire was remarkably ahead of its time- while not adopted by the competition, this method of light gun control would be adopted by modern arcade games in the genre once CRT televisions were starting to be phased out, and even the Wii Remote uses something similar! This, however, may have worked to the game's detriment in terms of sales, as we'll find out later. To combat this, Under Fire used infrared sensors instead in a box inside the cabinet, shown in this off-screen footage on boot-up and this method is briefly explained on Wikipedia over here. This can be a problem for people with sensitivity to light or epilepsy, and even if you're not affected by anything like that, it can get pretty intense on the ol' peepers. The vast majority of arcade games in the genre at the time used techniques for the controller that necessitated the screen flashing white every time you fire a shot.

What makes Under Fire particularly remarkable is the technology behind its light guns, and how it solved one of the oldest problems with light gun games of the era. These are the special police, and against the Hoppers, they are. With the normal police out of options as the situation gets out of control, the mayor has no choice but to call in a specially-trained police force, described by the amazing intro as 'truly brave men who fight with a dedication to justice and an abhorrence for evil'. It's a good ol' cops versus bad guys set-up, as the unnamed city of the game (I like to think it's Crime City after Tony & Raymond went on vacation) has found itself in the midst of chaos thanks to a criminal group called the Hoppers who have slowly taken control and made the city a living hell. Operation Wolf 3 came out later in the year and while from a game mechanics perspective both diverge from Lethal Enforcers in their own ways, Under Fire skews a little closer to Konami's approach to presentation and especially setting. This was, in fact, Taito's first attempt at a light gun game with digitised graphics, released early in 1994. I know it's hard to believe, but Lethal Enforcers was a big deal back in the early '90s!Īnyway. If you've seen screenshots of this game before, I know what you're thinking, you're thinking, 'Taito ripping off Lethal Enforcers. Also, we normally don't mess with emulator video settings too much, but as it is Under Fire is way too bright in MAME, so we toned the Gamma and Contrast settings down a little so it looks a little closer to how it would in a real arcade.įinally, special thanks to Ultra Powerful Pal of Gaming Hell, HokutoNoShock, for some assistance with identifying the guns used in the game and other bits and bobs.

It's not perfect, but it does the job close enough for our purposes, so we hope this is good enough. Instead, as is the Gaming Hell way, we improvised with a USB Wii sensor bar. It's a genuine gun game, with state-of-the-art infrared or IR tech! That means mouse control was disqualified for research purposes.

So for this one, we didn't have access to an Under Fire arcade cabinet, and unlike Operation Wolf 3, the gun isn't a joystick masquerading as a gun. Did you know, were you aware, that the writer of Gaming Hell has historically always been a shorty? Why d'ya think their name is Ant?! Sorry, getting distracted. You know, my idiot writer saw this once, once in an arcade and they were too short to play it.

Under Fire - Fight for Justice and honor as you try to wipe out crime!.

Lethal enforcers 2 arcade graphics