Most of these party games are more about creating a shared experience of crazy crap, where the inherent wackiness of the motion-sensitive mechanics and the resultant social atmosphere takes precedence over genuine gaming chops. Newly-formed Northern California developer Sanzaru, made up largely of former Activision employees, is pitching gamers yet another Wii minigame collection in Ninja Reflex, but hoping that its offering will distinguish itself by blending more hardcore attitudes into the mix. Along with fellow Shack editor Carlos Bergfeld, I was able to get hands-on time with the game (and kick the asses of numerous other publications) last night.

Ninja Reflex (also in the works for Nintendo DS) is, as its name suggests, heavily based on the fine reaction time of up to four players. It consists of several competitive mini-games representing various activities associated with martial arts: shuriken-throwing, catching flies with chopsticks, and puretests of reaction time. Though the final game has six multiplayer activities, only those three were demonstrated last night.

My favorite gametype was one that sees players catch flies with chopsticks, as in The Karate Kid. Flies buzz in, and players must aim at and grab them with their Wii remotes, then deposit them in one of three specific bowls. Of the modes displayed last night, this one is the most reliant on fine motor skills.

Choosing a higher difficulty level of the mode adds in color-coding; some flies are tagged with specific colors, and you will lose points if you grab and deposit flies not of your own color. The higher the difficulty, the faster the flies and the more color-coding there is.

The Shuriken mode has players locking onto and throwing ninja stars at moving enemy targets, while avoiding point-subtracting geisha targets. The B trigger locks on, and you throw by swinging the remote. The motion can be as short as you want it to be, but the faster your motion, the faster the shuriken flies.

Hotaru, or "Firefly," is Ninja Reflex's simplest gametype, a pure test of reflex. In its easiest variant, each player simply presses the Wii remote's A button immediately upon seeing a firefly light up on the screen; your total number of spotted fireflies, your lowest reaction time in milliseconds, and your average reaction time are recorded for the end-of-round breakdown.

As in the fly-catching game, turning up the difficulty adds a color-coded element; reacting to a firefly not of your color subtracts a point. On the highest difficulty level, most flies are color-coded, and they last a very short time before blinking out.

The thing that makes Ninja Reflex unique among other games of its segment is how much everything boils down to timing and reflex, down to the millisecond. I tied with another player in the final round of the EA-run tournament--but ended up the runner-up by a mere 27 milliseconds.

This makes the game considerably more competitive than most of its counterparts. Rather than flailing wildly as fast as you can, or simply being the most generally accurate, you have to be clearly and empirically superior to your competitors in order to win.

"We had a martial arts instructor come in and play, and he hadn't played a video game in 15 years," recalled Sanzaru president Glen Egan, "but instantly his Firefly time was under 200 milliseconds. We said, 'Wow, that's badass." Added lead designer Tin Guerrero, "He crushed us."

There is a single-player mode as well, which I briefly tried out on DS. It consists of many more game variants than its multiplayer component, though I saw only a glimpse of them. Guerrero noted that the team decided to boil down the multiplayer to the most robust contests. There are still six main categories of games, but apparently with enough potential for tweaking to result in some 300 possibilities. By playing through the single-player challenges, you rank up through martial arts ratings, eventually reaching third-degree black belt.

I suspect Ninja Reflex will have two main challenges: its limited number of multiplayer challenges, and identifying its general audience. Its closest competitor is probably Ubisoft's Rayman Raving Rabbids series, whose entries include dozens of games. Though Ninja Reflex is quite different from Raving Rabbids or even WarioWare, its multiplayer volume is likely to be contrasted.

It is also atypical to other similar games in that, as its designers often note, it requires enough concentration that during gameplay its participants tend to hush up--unusual behavior for a "social" game. It is hard to imagine inviting a bunch of buddies over for a night of Ninja Reflex. I can, however, see the game finding its niche as a gaming night supplement--with its potential for victories by a hair's breadth, it could even be used to settle friendly conflicts. Plus, the potential for drunken Ninja Reflex cannot be downplayed.

Regardless of how the game ends up being received, I must give credit to Shinzaru for putting a fresh take on what has suddenly become a painfully overplayed genre.