Lethal Enforcers with demons.
Lord of Gun is a 1994 Light Gun Game made for arcades by Taiwan's IGS and notably the company's sole effort in developing an arcade shooter after the craze started earlier by Lethal Enforcers 1 and Virtua Cop.
You are a gunslinger-for-hire and bounty hunter, on the trail of the leaders of an unnamed terrorist network intending to revive an ancient demon to Take Over the World (eh, what else is new), as you take on their armies across desert, jungle and arctic environments.
Gameplay-wise, Lord is no different from your standard Lethal Enforcers clone, but with some rather, shall we say, "fantastical" elements added. Where besides human criminals and terrorists, you'll occasionally face monsters in fantasy-esque settings like dinosaurs, yetis and killer plants, which you handily deal with using your trusty handgun.
Lord of Gun contains examples of:
- All Deserts Have Cacti: The desert stage have them all over the place, and occasionally terrorists would stick out from behind to take potshots at you.
- Battle Boomerang: The preferred weapon of the boss in the beach stage, where he will spam waves and waves of flung boomerangs at your direction. Which you need to shoot out the air to avoid getting hit.
- Breath Weapon: The Tree Demon and the Demon Lord's sole form breathes fireballs at you as an attack, though like most onscreen projectiles they can be shot before it hits you. Same goes for the giant Snowlem and his ice balls.
- Car Chase Shootout: The urban stage have you shooting at enemies in vehicles, while they return fire at you, with the gameplay practically ripped off from Lethal Enforcers 1.
- Clipped-Wing Angel: The game's Final Boss is the Demon Lord the terrorists have been attempting to awaken, until you interrupts their process. The Demon does get revived... as a single head with two arms and wings. It still puts up quite a fight as a boss however.
- Dual Boss: The swamp level have you battling a Tree-Demon, who's suddenly enforced by a fire-breathing Pterosaur, both of them having their own Life Meter that you fight together
- He Was Right There All Along: The Tree Demon, who seems like an ordinary tree until it reveals itself.
- Hollywood Natives: Hostile natives appears in the prehistoric jungles as enemies, either throwing spears at you or trying to attack with axes.
- Muck Monster: Mud-men appears in the swap stages, in place of the recurring terrorist mooks. They tend to appear by rising out the marsh and slime pools, and dissolves into muck once they're killed.
- Polar Penguins: Penguins appears in the winter stages as the only non-hostile onscreen target, occasionally crossing the screen in the midst of crossfire as you're shooting at terrorists and snowlems. Shooting them will penalize your points.
- Shooting Gallery: Bonus stages have you shooting at moving targets in a gallery, before moving on to the next stages.
- Shoot the Bullet: All the bosses use ranged projectile attacks at you, which you'll need to shoot in mid-air to avoid getting hit. From the jungle mercenary's bullets to the tree-demon's fireballs and the boomerangs hurled by another boss, and so on.
- Snowlems: You'll be attacked by animated snowmen and ice monsters who hurls gigantic snowballs at you in the winter stages, for some inexplicable reason. It ends with you facing a King Mook snow-monster as a boss.
- Stationary Boss:
- The game's first boss in the desert level, a mercenary wielding a rocket launcher, who stands on a single spot while spamming missiles on you.
- The Tree Demon, where it's a tree rooted to the ground, despite having abilities to breath fire at you.
- Swamps Are Evil: The forest stage, which ends with you crossing a monster-infested swamp. You have to battle a Tree-Demon as it's boss to finish the stage.
- Too Dumb to Live:
- The innocent bystanders, civilians and hostages will, for some inexplicable reason, wander straight into your line of fire while waving their hands about, despite a shootout going on. Or, when you're swapping lead against enemies hiding behind windows, stick their heads out causing you to accidentally shoot a bystander. And the game penalizes you for innocents shot. Not cool.
- The beach level is particularly worse in this aspect; there's a bikini-clad young woman sunbathing onscreen, completely oblivious to the shootout taking place around her. And yes, the game takes away your points if you shoot her.
- Vine Swing: The mercenary boss in the forest stage attacks you by taking potshots while swinging all over the damn place on vines, swinging in and out of the screen until you take him down.
