Space Manbow

Space Manbow is a shoot 'em up video game developed and published by Konami for the MSX2 in 1989. It was later re-released for the Wii's Virtual Console service on the 24th of November, 2009. It has never been released outside of Japan.

In the game the player pilots one of three starships shaped like a mambo fish. There are only two weapon types, however your ship is helped by two stationary "options" similar to those found in the Gradius series.

The ship from Space Manbow inspired the "Mambo" and "Samba" characters in Konami's Parodius series, which parodies other Konami shoot 'em ups. The characters first appeared in Gokujō Parodius!, in later Sexy Parodius and Gokuraku Parodius in Pachislot.

The Nintendo DS game Ganbare Goemon: Tōkai Dōchū Ōedo Tengu ri Kaeshi no Maki contains an unlockable Space Manbow minigame with identical graphics but enhanced music.

In 2007, Bart van Velzen released an unofficial sequel, Manbow 2, for MSX2.

Space Manbow has some similarities to Thunder Cross (and Thunder Cross II - both from Konami as well), which makes Space Manbow considered as a Thunder Cross sequel, released only to MSX2 computers.

Source: Wikipedia, "Space Manbow", available under the CC-BY-SA License.