What are somg of the best ships from shoot 'em up games?
Axelay is by far my favorite.  It's because I like seeing to huge boosters slapped on a tiny ships.  The fastpacks in macross are some of the coolest things to me. 
I'll tack on Manbow because it's wild and goofy, even though it looking like a tuna.  Also despite the gimmick for aerobot transformer in Guardian Legend the ship mode looks pretty cool!
I love the mechanical design in Gleylancer but man is the ship pretty lame.