YMMV / Victory in the Pacific

• Popular Game Variant: The game often uses a few of these when experienced players meet, because the game's balance varies at different levels of skill (newbies tend to find the Allies easier to play, casual players with some experience tend to find it evenly-matched, and serious players tend to find the Japanese favored). Most of them revolve around changing the opening turn's surprise attack to guarantee preservation of all 5 US carriers - while the chance for the Japanese to take out an American carrier is realistic, it tends to make things very difficult for the Allied player.
• Spiritual Successor: Victory in the Pacific was heavily inspired by War at Sea, a shorter and simpler game on the Battle of the Atlantic. Several of the basic mechanics are identical to, or clearly derived from, the earlier game and they are sometimes informally considered part of the same game series even though they aren't technically directly related and have different designers and publishers (initially at least - Avalon Hill ended up producing both, but War at Sea was first done by Jedko Games).