Trust those japesters at 1UP to come up with 'Schtick 'Em Up: The Shooter Gets Weird', certainly one of the most eclectic features to appear from a mainstream game site in a while, since it deals with a "collection of outlandish, offbeat and sometimes just plain bizarre takes" on the shoot-em-up genre.

Naturally, some of the more obvious titles such as Parodius ("Hardcore Gradius fans may not like the idea of their favorite shooter getting the Mel Brooks treatment, but it's hard not to love Parodius once you look beyond the stinging satire") and the infamous Cho Aniki ("It really is raining men in the world of Cho Aniki, and the digitized downpour won't quit until you've either finished the game or run out of the room screaming.")

But there's some (even more) obscure goodness in there, particularly in the form of Game Tengoku for the Saturn, for which it's noted: "Some of Game Tengoku's other classic moments include battling a giant robot built entirely out of interconnected game systems (viva la 32X!) and an unexpected trip through the early days of gaming." Mm, game hardware conglomerations.