PARODIUS: Hikaru

Ladies on rockets!
I've said before that I'm not a big fan of recolour second players, but it's hard to criticise when they're original characters, it could have been deliberately deliberate!
In this case Hikaru and Akane are actually twins (identical, I assume, but with different coloured hair...?) and are practically Parodius mascots in their own right after their roles in the soundtrack CDs and panchinko machines.

At the very least attention is drawn to the fact that Hikaru is extroverted and Akane is introverted so they work pretty well as separate characters.

Hikaru's loadout is generally considered a parody of Konami's Thunder Cross ship, though this is more apparent in the SNES version of Fantastic Parodius, otherwise she's unique in having only one weapon type but two missile variants, which in turn offers her two different option formations.