The people at Nitrome just released some pretty interesting shmup-puzzler called Fatcat, heavily inspired by Ikaruga. As always pixelart is quite beautiful and the game starts off very easy and gets rather tricky after the first boss fight.
Might be a nice introduction to shmups for some younger kids.
Imho quite original and worth a try, would love to see them come up with a game for the DS.
appropriate graphic and fresh gameplay. At least i never played a mix like that. you really need to keep the fatcat alive since hes so useful. Megaburping and all. Owl and cat, what an unlikely pair.