Lethal Weapon (SNES) Playthrough - NintendoComplete
350A playthrough of Ocean's 1992 license-based platformer for the Super Nintendo, Lethal Weapon.
Played through on the normal difficulty level.
Lethal Weapon on the Super Nintendo appeared in stores around the same time that Lethal Weapon 3 was released in theaters. It's a platformer wherein you, playing as Riggs or Murtaugh, run about the city, shooting and karate kicking everything that moves in order to accomplish objectives that have been loosely based on events in the films.
There are five main stages, and the first four missions can be played in any order: you'll have to put a stop to a smuggling ring at the harbor, prevent a bomb from exploding in a shopping center, prevent yet another bomb from exploding in a subway station, and rescue Leo Getz (Joe Pesci with a terrible bleach job), before finally going after Jack, the villain from Lethal Weapon 3, for the game's finale.
If you're thinking that already this sounds better than Ocean's horrendous RoboCop 3 game, you'd be 100% correct.
But Ocean rarely seemed to produced "great" or "terrible" SNES games. Their output tended to range from "barely acceptable" to "thoroughly medicore," but fortunately, Lethal Weapon's quality manages to rise above most of the company's other 16-bit offerings.
The levels are big and contain a lot of bonuses to find for anyone that wants to thoroughly explore. Though some of the areas can feel a bit maze-like, they're generally structured well enough to guide you toward the goals without getting you hopelessly lost, and the game doesn't waste your time with obnoxious "Collect X objects to open the exit" goals (unlike certain other Ocean games... *cough* Dennis *gag*).
Since Riggs and Murtaugh do differ slightly in their abilities, there is a bit of strategy to picking who to use for each stage. Riggs can fire his gun faster than Murtaugh, while Murtaugh can jump higher than Riggs. It doesn't make a huge difference, but there are some shortcuts around that only Murtaugh can take advantage of.
The controls are a bit loose and slippery, but they're consistent and get the job done. Lethal Weapon is not an easy game - it expects you to be a platforming ninja by the time you reach the end - but it does at least equip you adequately for the task.
The SNES game largely mirrors the Amiga version - the graphics are super-stylized but nicely detailed, and the levels feel huge around the small character sprites. Though the game won't wow you with its graphics, they're pleasant enough to look at, and there are a lot nice (albeit grainy) digitized stills from the movie used in the cutscenes.
The soundtrack is entirely different between platforms, though. The SNES music is excellent: the tunes are catchy, the samples are well layered, and the drums are sharp - Ocean always knew how to push SNES audio - but it is a bit unfortunate that none of the Amiga tunes were brought over. That version's soundtrack was absolutely brilliant.
(Enough so that I recently covered the first stage theme from the Amiga game on SNES hardware! You can take a listen here: https://youtu.be/Mwi323m0rbg )
While it might not quite make you feel like you're actually in the shoes of Mel Gibson and Danny Glover, Lethal Weapon is one helluva decent movie-to-game adaptation, and it stands head-and-shoulders above Ocean's typical console shovelware.
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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