Every month, as part of the regular monthly meetings of the Austin, TX independent game community JUEGOS RANCHEROS, we do a very casual & chatty rundown of the ten or so games from the previous month for the audience, to give people — especially those curious onlookers from outside the indie community itself — a look at what they may have missed. The featured games are both local and global, and both indie and, on occasion, a bit-bigger-budget — what binds them together is simply that they’re all amazing.

In keeping with the tongue-in-tobacco-packed-cheek tone, we call these run-downs A Fistful of Indies, which are presented here on Venus Patrol for your reference, each fully-annotated, -linked, and off-the-cuff blurbed, in addition to their home on the JUEGOS RANCHEROS site.

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There is probably no better start to the day than to hear that publisher D3 has heard our cries, and just confirmed that Earth Defense Force 3 — the PlayStation Vita enhanced-remake of the Xbox 360 game Earth Defense Force 2017 — will be making its way to North America as EDF 2017 Portable.

The announcement was made via the company’s EDF-related Facebook page, and also via the truncated ‘@EarthDefenseFce‘ twitter account that I had no idea existed until just now. For more on why this should get you excited, check back to this write up from just before Tokyo Game Show.

In what might be the greatest trade-show promotional move of all time, publisher D3 have shown off the swag they’ll be bringing to this year’s Tokyo Game Show: an official Earth Defense Force Insect Observation Kit, purchasable for the low price of ¥500, which I will be massively, sorely disappointed if a fellow journo/attendee doesn’t pick up for me.

If the amazingness is lost on you: the farm will be in promotion of Earth Defense Force 3 Portable, a PlayStation Vita remake of the elder Xbox 360 exclusive Earth Defense Force 2017 (the third iteration, but the first to come to U.S. shores), due out in Japan later this month.

The EDF series as a whole, which began with a discount-price original nearly 10 years ago, is a hugely under-appreciated B-game cult-classic: an action-shooter that pits you typically against little more than a stock-3D-model of an ant or a spider, sized up to 50-feet-tall, and then multiplied so there are hundreds coming at you at once. It’s an almost cardboard-thin but beautifully-balanced design made brilliant through perfect self-awareness of its own limitations.

In a surprise move, D3 has also just announced that developer Sandlot will be returning in 2013 with a brand new Earth Defense Force 4 for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, with the first trailer above coming in just hours ago, and a field of screenshots just in from Famitsu.

There’ll very likely be many more updates here coming over the next month as more details emerge, but in the meantime, you should familiarize yourself with the series, if you haven’t already, with a fast, cheap download to your 360, a decision I promise you will never regret.