PARODIUS: Mambo

Debuting in Fantastic Parodius, Mambo is sometimes know as "General Laser" due to his huge amount of laser fire. He's kind of a parody of the player ship from Space Manbow but honestly it's more likely he's a parody of the titular Manbow itself, being a gigantic, laser shooting, sunfish shaped spaceship.

For some reason Mambo and Hikaru got slightly different movesets in the SNES version of Fantastic Parodius in which the former played more like the ship from R-Type but in every other appearance has used the four laser mix-and-match style.

Probably not a well known fact but Samba is actually female!