73. World Wars (SNK, Arcade (Switch), 1987)

World Wars (much like game #71, Bermuda Triangle) is a vertically-scrolling shooter released in 1987 that uses SNK's loop lever joystick. It shares many obvious similarities to Bermuda Triangle, including the exact same control scheme and the information presented on-screen including your power level and distance to the end of the level. Even the end of level transition where your ship swirls into a black triangle is present (this made a little bit of sense in Bermuda Triangle's theming, but here it's obviously just a carryover).

Thankfully all of the differences to Bermuda Triangle are improvements, however minor. Your ship is much smaller, but only capable of taking a single hit, so the difficulty is still decent but not as taxing as Bermuda Triangle. In World Wars, the screen only scrolls one way (up), so it feels more like a standard shooter. Crucially, the bosses are decently varied and not extremely difficult.

Not that all of these improvements make the game a classic by any means; your ship still moves a bit too slow and your hitbox is pretty large, so I'm not able to get in the same zone that I am when playing a truly excellent shooting game.

3/5, a slight improvement over its predecessor, Bermuda Triangle