We love it when we find weird and unique indie games to tell you all about! Our alien friends to the left herald these occasions.

It’s a new year, and probably going to be an exceedingly crappy one, so let’s at least start it out with something amazing and wonderful. For while it’s a world where millions of people make extremely stupid decisions, it’s also one where some people work diligently to make bafflingly detailed works of art like Lumpy Touch‘s GAR-TYPE, the R-Type/Saturday Morning cartoon crossover you didn’t know you’d love. CW: pixelated cartoon gore, but that sounds worse than it is.

To reuse my Metafilter description: Help ace fighter JON STARBUCKLE, stationed on the USS ACRES, pilot the GAR-TYPE D to destroy GORESTAR, a planet-eating threat, with your choice of three different weapons: Ravioli, Macaroni or Spaghetti.

There’s so many genius touches in this, like the signs for Italian restaurants in the first level, or the name of the Lasagna Base, or the unexpected boss of the second level. It vividly realizes the aesthetic of the anime-influenced Japanese shooter. Even if it’s too difficult for you (and it might be too difficult for me), you can enjoy the trailer and playthrough video below for a tour of its ridiculous action.

Here’s that trailer (1 minute):

And the playthrough video (19m):

GAR-TYPE — Newgrounds, itch.io ($0, Unity: HTML5, Windows & Mac)

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The Pico-8 is the most popular fantasy game console by a wide margin. We’ve already linked to Josh “cortex” Millard’s Ennuigi, which is notable enough to have its own Wikipedia entry.

Ennuigi was more of an extended joke than a game, though, while Pico-8 Moon Patrol is no joke; it’s substantially harder than the original arcade game, putting you up against harder obstacles earlier. Sometimes it doesn’t feel fair when a flying saucer drops a bomb at such an angle that neither speeding up nor slowing down could have avoided it in time, although it’s possible, in this version, to shoot down the bomb before it strikes you.

Give it a try! This video is my best run to date, getting through the first three sectors:

pahammond’s Moon Patrol for Pico-8 (lexoffle.com)

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