Do you know what happens in the game industry on December 30 of every year?

Absolutely nothing.

How am I supposed to feed my family of 7 on the meager scraps The Merc throws my way if I can't find content to offer the most attractive readers in Portland? Wm.™ Steven Humphrey lives in a golden mansion made from the bones of the Elephant Man and I'm forced to kill ducks at Laurelhurst park to make sure my 12-year-old son has an interesting hat.

Life is bullshit, but at times like this I can always rely on ninjas to help me momentarily forget that I'm a 25-year-old whose life consists of huffing dishwashing detergent and writing dick jokes on the 'net.

That's three minutes of gameplay from Ninja Blade, an Xbox 360 game that seamlessly blends the world of ninjas with the wildly dissimilar world of blades. Included in the vignette is our hero Ryu (not Hayabusa) sprinting down the side of a skyscraper, cursing a giant spider to a painful battle with lymphoma (via patented Ninja X-ray Vision), and an answer to the age-old question "What happens when you cut a spider's legs off?"

Hint: They grow back explosively!

The game doesn't yet have an American release date, but Japanese ninja fans (read: everyone in the whole damn country) can snag this Ninja Gaiden rival on January 29.

Don't let the current lack of a gaijin-specific version dissuade you entirely though. If you happen to know the art of acquiring stuff from the Japanese version of Xbox Live you can play the just-released demo for Ninja Blade faster than you can say "Izuna Drop."