YMMV / SDI: Strategic Defense Initiative

• Harsher in Hindsight: The opening where a missile is dropped on the city is clearly meant to take place in New York, with a clear view of Statue of Liberty, and you can see what's supposed to be the Twin Towers. Like so many media featuring them, this became unfortunate after the 9/11 attacks and The War on Terror.
• Serial Numbers Filed Off: It's not present at first, but when late stages start to feature round Planet Spaceships, it's not hard to see the influence of Death Star from Star Wars. It wouldn't be the only time as Sega later published Galaxy Force that also features them.
• Unintentional Period Piece: The game's premise, title, and player character are an obvious reference to the real-life Strategic Defense Initiative pitched by the US president Ronald Reagan on March 23, 1983. Only in a few years, the project was concluded to expensive and impractical, leaving its budget cut and moved to more realistic programs. This ended up dating this game as a product of mid 1980s.