Star Soldier

Star Soldier is a line of Vertical Scrolling Shooters by Hudson Soft. The series started in the 1980s as a Spiritual Successor to Tecmo's Star Force. The games are characterized by their distinct power-up weapons.

The games in this series include:
 * Star Soldier (1986, NES/MSX; remade in 2003 for Gamecube/PS2/PSP)
 * Super Star Soldier (1990, TurboGrafx-16)
 * Final Soldier (1991, TurboGrafx-16)
 * Soldier Blade (1992, TurboGrafx-16)
 * Star Parodier (1995, Turbo CD) - Cute Em Up
 * Star Soldier: Vanishing Earth (1997, Nintendo 64)
 * Star Soldier R (2008, WiiWare) - timed play only

A Hudson Soft game that could be considered as a spinoff is Hector '87, also known as Starship Hector. It differs from all other Star Soldier games by being set on Earth and scrolling horizontally in its even-numbered stages, but was the first game to feature the 2-minute and 5-minute modes found in the later Star Soldier games.

Tropes appearing in these games:

 * Awesome but Impractical: In Vanishing Earth, the green ship. How cool is it that its Ex-Arms consist of shooting green electricity everywhere, and throwing a freakin' stream of green fire towards the enemy? Problem is, it's the slowest ship, it's Rolling is the shortest, and its main weapon, while it covers pretty much everything in the horizontal field in front of you, is as a result the weakest one since all its damage is spread out rather than focused.
 * Awesome but Practical: The other two ships in Vanishing Earth. The red one is between the green and blue ships; its better than the green one but worse than the blue one, although its 2nd Ex-Arm is arguably inferior to the green one's. It's the only ship whose main weapon can hit behind it though. The blue one is an outright Game Breaker, with only one real weakness that may require more advanced skill at Shoot 'Em Ups.
 * Boss Rush: Boss On Parade in the remake for PSP
 * Nintendo Hard: Of course.