Apparently the Wii can let you bowl, bond with your family, and now teach you karate. Yes, that’s right, this ancient art is coming to the Wii and it’ll supposedly teach you the fine art of martial arts. It’s called Ninja Reflex, and Electronic Arts hopes to teach martial arts visually through the Wii console. EA announced that Ninja Reflex should be coming to retail stores after March 4, so people won’t have to wait too long to test out their ninja skills ‘Wiisually’.

How Ninja Reflex works is that it offers a series of ninja challenges to test your true inner ninja by testing reflexes, hand and eye coordination, and reaction times. A sensei — the typical Asian teacher with a long white beard — guides you as he tests how truly skilled you are. As you practice your ninja skills, you’ll advance by belts, just like in Tae Kwon Do. You can go from a white belt to a black belt, depending on how masterful you are with their challenges. It might seem silly, even juvenile to an extent, but experts of martial arts are backing this up, including Tae Kwon Do medalist Herb Perez. You know these guys mean serious business, so there must be some legality to this game.

Ninja Reflex looks like a game people should at least check out, if not just for the fact that major martial arts experts are behind this game’s legality. Who knows — you could become a ninja master too, if you play it enough. Ninja Reflex is available in stores now — and if not, available within a couple of weeks — so check it out and see how well your ninja skills test against the competition. EA thinks this game is going to be a true innovator, but that’s up for the gamers to decide.

There are some strange rumors about the Wii floating around cyberspace, and most of them include Namco Bandai. What have they done now? On the bright side, at least the Wii remote hasn’t been turned into a light saber.

Well actually, it has. Too bad it’s not April 1.

Here are some of the rumors you should (or maybe shouldn’t) know about:

• Arcades in Japan are shutting down thanks to Namco Bandai and Sega. Sega’s tight lipped about it, but Namco points its finger at the Wii. The Wii’s popularity has reached the hearts – and pocketbooks – of many young Japanese students, and their forays are aimed at upgrading their Wiis instead of heading to the local arcade. So Namco, after realizing how empty their arcades looked, closed roughly 20% of their arcades. Sega won’t say if that infernal Wii is causing them trouble, but it’s definitely not because of that infernal PS3.
• Time to put your Wii down, guys. Satayan Mahajan, chairman of Motus Corporation, has developed a Darwin remote in its stead. A Darwin light saber, that is. Mahajan says the Darwin is better than the Wii remote because it allows more realistic gameplay, but we’ll have to see if Mahajan can walk his talk. It is said to retail at $90 (when it’s released), so start saving up now.
• Namco Bandai thought it was a great idea to expand every sport in existence and release it for the Wii. Now Namco is rumored to be creating a cheerleading game. No one’s sure how this will pan out, but it’s time to brush up on those pom pom skills. You’ll be using a Wii Balance, a Wii remote and nunchuck to do all the intense cheerleading action, and this game is obviously going to be a hit with men. Obviously. Namco is still in the developing stages, so it’ll be a while before you can raise those pom poms.

March is going to be a big month for the Wii, so maybe we’ll hear where Namco is going with this idea. Not that anyone wants to, but innovation is innovation. Even if it involves cheerleading.

Overall: 9/10 Value: 8/10 Speed: 10/10 Selection: 9/10

Reviewed: GameAccess.ca - 10 Day Free Trial

If you’re like me you aren’t a fan of having to go compete with everyone at your local video store for the latest video game rental. You know what I’m talking about- the hordes of fanboys that camped out Blockbuster when Mario Galaxy and Metroid Prime came out, or the parents that are fighting lineups to rent their kids the latest games (for some peace and quiet, no doubt).

Just as you can now rent movies online via Zip.ca (offering a two week trial), you can now rent video games online through GameAccess.ca. GameAccess.ca is based out of Montreal and claims a shipping time of 4 days to the western coast. Being born and raised in Alberta, I thought that I’d put GameAccess.ca to the test to see if they were everything that they claimed. After all, I like the idea of having my games mailed to me.

This is the perfect solution for people living in Canada and who like the idea of online video game rentals. The real question, however, is does it live up to the hype? Is renting video games online really a feasible solution for the average gamer, family of four, or a single person just looking to get their game on?

The Lowdown on GameAccess

GameAccess.ca is unique in that there are few competing services that will mail you video games to your door. Some related websites, such as Zip.ca, have a small selection of games but it’s certainly nothing worth getting excited over. GameAccess.ca, by comparison, has thousands of titles for all of the major systems (PS2, PS3, Wii, XBOX, XBOX 360, etc.) and even some systems that are less common (PSP, NintendoDS, etc.).

GameAccess.ca offers the following:

• 10 day free trial. I found this useful when writing this review, though I’ve decided to stay on as a GameAccess.ca member as I have all three of the major systems and love that I can rent games for all three online.

• Express shipping. Four days from Montreal to Calgary.

• No shipping charges. You never have to pay for shipping.

• No late fees. Keep the game as long as you want. Once you send it back they’ll mail you the next game in your que.

• Four different packages to choose from. The most common is their “two game out” package, though there are packages that are as a low as 1 game out and as high as 4 games out.

• Massive selection. I didn’t count them all, but there are literally thousands of games available for rent.

The GameAccess Experience

So, once I created my account and activated my 10 day trial I immediately picked out the games that I wanted to rent. Hmm, let’s see here… Rachet and Clank for the PS3, Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles for the Wii, Mass Effect for the XBOX 360, and then Alien Syndrome for the Wii. I selected in what order that I wanted them and, my “renting” experience now essentially over for the day, I perused the site a bit. Apparantly you can buy games and hardware and stuff off of the site too- a good feature.

Three days later I had two games in the mail, complete with self-addressed and postage-paid return envelopes. Ratchet and Clank and Resident Evil, the top two of my list. Awesome.

That night I had a good gaming session and thoroughly enjoyed myself. Then it occurred to me to call customer service and say that one of the games didn’t work right (for the purposes of this review) as I wanted to see how they reacted and what they did. I wasn’t really enjoying Resident Evil as much as I was Ratchet and Clank, so I called customer service and told them that Resident Evil was wicked scratched and it won’t play on my Wii. Now, this is where I was pleasantly surprised: she apologized to me, told me to mail it back, and then explained that they’d mail me another copy of the game. If they didn’t have another copy they’d mail me another game from my list and mail me a copy as soon as it came back.

Awesome, pretty hard to argue with that eh?

Conclusion

So, I must admit that at the end of the day I was very happy with GameAccess.ca. In fact, I’ve gone well past the 10 day trial and have continued to use the service for nearly a month now. Each of my orders arrives in 4 days or less, they have all worked properly without any errors, and even then they took care of my fictitious error without any questions.

For around $25 a month you eliminate late fees and add a constantly revolving selection of games to your portfolio, and that’s only one plan. They have less expensive plans and more expensive plans that are designed to suit anyone’s tastes. This is perfect for someone who doesn’t want to have to run to a Blockbuster only to find the game out of stock or for someone who has kids and likes the idea of always having games without late fees.

Either way, regardless of what appeals to you, GameAccess.ca is an absolute steal and a wonderful service.

Overall: 9/10 - I absolutely love the convenience and simplicity of the service.

Value: With packages costing less than $10, anyone can afford it.

Speed: Games arrived in under 5 business days each and every time.

Selection: The latest games for most popular systems, though it would be awesome if they had some old-school systems out there.

Click here to start your free trial!