Next week I'm going with a pretty open ended theme for the Trick of the Day: Tricks based on Martial Arts.
Usually I stick with a related series of moves or a bunch of moves that share a common body part, but this week I decided to define things a little more broadly.
Of course, nearly every move in Myachi can be traced back to martial arts. Even the name Myachi, while essentially meaningless, is meant to invoke the feelings of kung fu and karate. It is said to be a combination of Mr. Miyogi and Tai Chi, betraying its martial arts roots from the earliest days of the game.
Perhaps the move most recognized for this heritage is the "Cold Fusion", which evokes memories of Mr. Miyogi's "Wax On, Wax Off" in the minds of anyone who has seen the original Karate Kid. In many moves, the very name is a dead give away as to the tricks inspiration. Think of the "Fu", the "Ninja", the "Bruce Lee" and the "Samurai".
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| Think about how awesome he would have been with a Myachi... |
But more than that, Myachi shares its principle goals with martial arts. Clearly, Myachi aids in balance, reflexes, strength, stamina, precision, ambidexterity, self confidence, aim, hand speed, hand-eye coordination and flexibility. These are, of course, the same benefits that martial arts seeks to unlock. They are both the keys to being good at martial arts and the reason for being good at martial arts.
This has not gone unnoticed by the martial arts community. Prominent martial artists have been reaching out to Myachi as far back as 2005 and this relationship was long ago memorialized in the famously jammable and awesome Member's Solutions Myachi.
In 2007, a new fan of the game showed Myachi to his Ninjitsu instructor. Said instructor immediately fell in love with it and sent Myachi Man this glowering e-mail about all the ways Myachi could be used in martial arts training. He asked if the Myachi company had ever thought of that before.
This single e-mail culminated in the creation of an entire Myachi Martial Arts program, excerpts of wish can be seen by clicking here (thanks to the intrepid DGH for digging this up for us). This exhaustive program was the collaborative effort between myself and a dude who could have killed me with a chewing gum wrapper at any moment. Despite his lethal-weapon-ness he was a super nice guy who you probably would never have guessed to be a third degree black belt if he wasn't wearing that particular belt when you met him.
We made the Members Solution Myachi as a promotion for the martial arts program and then I went down to Orlando with a few more people who could have beat me to a pulp even if I wasn't in the same room. There was a huge martial arts convention going on and we figured it would be the perfect place to unveil our new program.
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| By law, all mentions of Orlando have to include a picture of Disneyland. There is also a bylaw that states the picture must make Disneyland look awesome. |
Needless to say, Myachi was the hit of the show. It was well received and dozens of schools and sensais took Myachis back to train the next generation of ninja assassins... or people who you don't want to accidentally pick on anyway.
The program even got the attention of a local news show in Idaho (if I recall correctly). They took the Myachi program to a martial arts school in their area and gave the students nothing but Myachis and the instructional DVD and checked it out.
For the life of me I can't find the link to the video on You-Tube. I'm trusting one of our many faithful followers to have it favorited or something so that I can embed it later, but needless to say, their review was overwhelmingly popular. The students fell in love with the game and saw it as a great way to practice when they were away from the dojo.
The relationship between Myachi and the martial arts world continues to develop and it's hard to say where it will go next. Needless to say, when the world is attacked by the robot ninjas, they may look to us Myachi players to save the world.
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| Gaze upon your enemy... |
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