It was created in response to Nintendo's Super Scope and as Sega's successor to the Master System Light Phaser.

The gun is built from three detachable parts (pistol, shoulder stock, sights), and communicates with the television via an infrared sensor.

He originally proposed non-shooting minigames based on existing Sega licenses like Joe Montana, David Robinson, and ToeJam & Earl, but most of the prototypes were abandoned due to high cost in favor of more shooting-type games.

[7] It operates on batteries and works in conjunction with a sensor plugged into the second controller port and placed atop the television display.

[8] The Menacer was produced in response to the Nintendo Super Scope[5] released several months earlier,[7] though Sega intended to support the peripheral as more than a clone.

[7] Mac Senour, a producer at Sega,[12] was responsible for the peripheral and its six-game cartridge as the company's "hardware boy".

[11] He designed the six minigames based on Sega's previous intellectual property and licenses—such as ToeJam & Earl[a]—under the instruction to avoid shooting games.

[18] Sega's sales exceeded Nintendo's during the 1992 Christmas season, and gained cultural cachet for the Menacer among other peripherals.

[12] In his first days at Atari, Senour was sent to Paris, where he remembered an excess of unsold Menacers in a Virgin Megastore display.

[30] The Menacer is also compatible with Corpse Killer and American Laser Games' other titles, such as Who Shot Johnny Rock?

[32] Matthew Reynolds of Digital Spy wrote that the Menacer was a poorly executed "flop" that is much less likely to be remembered than its Super Scope competitor, even though the latter did not fare much better.

Reynolds added that the Menacer was hurt by the poor quality of the pack-in six-game cartridge and a lack of titles in support of the peripheral.

[5][31][41] Writing for the Chicago Tribune on the 1992 Consumer Electronics Show, Dennis Lynch saw the Super Scope and Menacer as a continuation of a Nintendo–Sega arms race and wrote that the peripheral's "Uzi attachment" was "just what every kid needs".

[43] Toronto Star's William Burrill wrote that the "Great Zapper War"[44] would be decided by the strength of the light guns' supporting games.

[5][7] Paul Mellerick of Mega found the manual sights an eyestrain and the gun "deadly accurate" as long as players used the Accu-Sight mode.

[9] Jaz of Mean Machines had low expectations for the Menacer, which he compared to the shortcomings of previous light guns: high price, short-lived novelty, and dearth of games.

Gus of Mean Machines wrote that "Sega hasn't learned the lessons" from the Super Scope's "fairly naff" release in the magazine's January 1993 Menacer review, calling the light gun a "samey-looking, samey-playing piece of hardware, with some redundant add-ons" with mediocre launch titles.

[4] As for the other six-pack titles, Mega called Rockman's Zone "not a very inspiring game" for its slow pacing and "bland" graphics.

[4] Mega found Whack Ball easy and did not expect players to maintain interest in it for longer than an hour.

[6] Mega wrote that Front Line was programmed poorly with "the appearance of having never met up with a gamestester", calling it "truly awful".

[3] Sega Force's Paul Wooding considered Terminator 2 a "must" for Menacer owners, adding that it far surpassed the quality of the six-pack games.

[48] The Hawk Eye's Will Smith wrote in 2010 that the six-game pack and Terminator 2 were the only Menacer games readily accessible.

[31] Edward Fox of The Centre for Computing History has said that the museum's Menacer is his favorite piece in the collection when used with the Aura Interactor haptic suit.