Space Manbow (スペースマンボウ,Supēsu Manbō?) is a video game developed and published by Konami for the MSX2 home computer in 1989. It was a step above the Nemesis games as it had smooth scrolling and a bigger color palette. As with Konami's previous releases, Space Manbow comes with the SCC chip for better sound quality. The game was later re-released on the Wii's Virtual Console service on the November 24, 2009. It has never been released outside of Japan. In 2007, Bart van Velzen released an unofficial sequel, Manbow 2, for MSX2.
In the year 189 of the stellar calendar, humanity happened upon the ruins of an ancient (and, if the st. 7 decor is anything to go by, rather decadent and malicious) civilization, and sent an archaeological crew to explore them. However, the crew accidentally managed to activate the ruins' defense system. The system operated by identifying the Sol system as the intruders' origin, then launched the Sun-Fish ("Manbou" being Japanese for "Sunfish"), an ultimate bio-mechanical weapon starship capable of destroying an entire solar system and protected by an impregnable force-field bubble. The surviving members of the crew, however, find a chance to stop the Sun-Fish. By using the unearthed Manbow-J (i.e. Junior Sun-Fish) fighter and activating a teleportation system in the deepest part of the ruins, one pilot, Kliever Mu, can actually get inside the force bubble and destroy the Sun-Fish from there.
According to the staff comments, this game was originally planned as a home conversion for Thunder Cross, another Konami shooter for arcades. Because of this, Space Manbow is considered an entry in the Thunder Cross series.
This also explains the reasoning for Emon • 5 having two tracks from Space Manbow in Otomedius Gorgeous.
