This is reality! Let's Play 8 Eyes!

So...8 Eyes. If you've heard of this game, it was probably mentioned in the same breath as "Castlevania ripoff", and anyone buying it or recieving it as a gift based on their similarities would be rightly disappointed. I personally had no idea what Castlevania was when my parents brought this thing home, as their frequent trips to yard sales and flea markets combined with a complete ignorance of gaming left me with a rather odd NES collection. To me, this was just another impossible, confusing, and all-around frustrating platformer that I played the crap out of anyway because that's what kids do.

Cut to about two months ago, and I pull this out again to find that it's not quite so bad, especially when armed with the knowledge that my childhood self had already obtained. Awkward as it is, there's some entertainment to be had here and besides, how many games let you play as a falconer?



I've got to give credit to the cover artists; this game must have looked amazing on a store shelf. You've got a badass swordsman with a falcon on his shoulder fighting off the usual fantasy monsters, with some more imposing creatures looming in the background and a clever design for the title. The entire story is printed on the back, so let's find out what's going on.

"After hundreds of years of chaos, mankind has finally emerged from the ruins of nuclear war. This world of the distant future has once again flourished under the guidance of the Great King, who harnessed the power of the 8 Eyes to rebuild the planet."

What.

"These strange jewels of power were formed at the eyes, or centers, of the eight nuclear explosions which nearly destroyed the Earth. In the wrong hands, the 8 Eyes could cause untold destruction... and now, they have been seized by the Great King's eight Dukes, in a desperate bid to gain control of the world for themselves. They have banished the King to the nuclear wastelands, and already their squabbling threatens to plunge the world into war once again!"

So wait, nuclear explosions create magical gemstones, which themselves can also cause untold destruction? Great message for the kids there. Wanna rule the world? Just set off a nuke, stroll into the impact zone, and pick up the glowing rock you find in the center.

"The task of retrieving the 8 Eyes falls to you, Orin the Falconer, the bravest and mightiest of the King's Guardsmen. With your fighting falcon, Cutrus, you must penetrate each of the eight Dukes' castles. There you will face the Dukes' soldiers, and battle strange nuclear mutants such as living skeletons, giant wasps, and mud men. You must defeat the monstrous Boss of each castle to retrieve the Jewel of Power he guards."

Because as we all know, radiation poisoning invariably turns people into monsters in video games. It's like a law or something.

"Then, to complete your quest, return the 8 Eyes to the Altar of Peace to await the return of the Great King, so that he may finish the rebuilding of Earth. Your reward will be the eternal gratitude of all mankind!"

What's the Alter of Peace? Who is this Great King? How are either of them going to fix a nuclear wasteland? Nevermind, let's just go stab things.



I'm not usually a stickler for punctuation, but it's a bit sad when a game has such an apostrophical error in it's own title.

Before we begin, let's do something crazy and look at the manual first. Specifically, page 6.



"Objective
The first goal in 8 Eyes is to discover the correct order in which to play the first seven levels. The levels must be played in a certain order because each Boss Enemy is only vulnerable to one sword. The Bosses can be damaged with the Special Weapons found in each level, and by attacking them with Cutrus; but they can only be eliminated with the proper sword. After a level is completed, the player receives a new sword, which is effective on only one of the remaining Bosses."

So we've got a Mega Man system going on here, and must figure out which order to fight the bosses in so we can hurt them more. Unlike Mega Man, we don't have obvious elemental relationships to work with, so it's all a matter of guesswork.

"Each Boss holds a jewel. After defeating the Boss, the jewel appears, and when Orin touches it, the password for this point of the game is displayed. While in the first seven levels, you must locate the seven scrolls of jewel placement. These contain hints which are used to place the eight jewels into the altar which appears after Level 8 is completed. The jewels must be placed correctly in order to complete the game (maybe!)."

There's that alter again. Its purpose just gets more and more confusing, and what's this "maybe?"

"Lives
This is a one-life game, meaning there is one Orin per game. If you lose the one Orin, the game is over. No free men are awarded. This is reality! However, there are many opportunities to gain Life Power during the game."

Magic nuke gems, living skeletons, and monstrous dukes. This is reality!


Next Update: Stage selection and gameplay. I know this was a short post, but there's a lot to cover in the next one and I wanted to get the intro out of the way. Later tonight I'll get the game started and explain how it all works.

...giant wasps and mud-men I can accept (fictional radiation makes things giant and/or slimy) but... living skeletons?

What the hell kind of science were those bombs made of?

I'm grateful for the shadows on the box art. That getup would leave NOTHING to the imagination in proper lighting. Perhaps in a post-apocalyptic world, there are no pants?

They're all fighting for the pants on that dead guy.

The Great King outlawed all pants, so no one would have pockets with which to steal his gems.

8 Eyes doles out fun and life lessons in the same sentence.

Pressing start brings us to this screen. Initiate (fancy!) begins the game from the start, while continue brings up the password screen.



Waitwaitwaitwait...wait. All these castles I'm supposed to infiltrate are in DIFFERENT COUNTRIES?! I haven't seen any mention of working cars or planes lying around, so am I expected to WALK? This is going to be a long quest.

In any case, we haven't started playing yet and we've already hit one of the game's awkward moments. Cutrus is flying in front of Arabia right now, and the D-Pad does nothing here. Pressing A moves Cutrus clockwise around the stages, and B move him counter-clockwise. The House of Ruth is unselectable for now.

Before we set off for a random country, let's check the manual again. As with many NES manuals, 8 Eyes has a Hints and Strategies section with various tips, the first of which is...

"- The first seven levels must be finished in the correct order. After defeating a Boss you are awarded a more powerful sword, but it will only be effective against one of the remaining bosses. The sword you start with is weak and only good for a country near France."

Ok then, we'll just take a quick look at a map and...



...thanks game. Three of the seven available levels are bordering France, so we still have to take a shot in the dark. I'm going to start with Spain, both because it's a good level to introduce the game's mechanics and because years of trial and error already taught me that it's the correct choice.



Finally, we get around to the game itself. Orin's looking paler than the cover art would suggest, and Cutrus is just...weird. He's also got some pants now, but is either lacking shoes or has completely white boots.



B stabs, A jumps, and Down crouches. Orin has terrible range compared to the Belmont family, and much of the frustration of this game is caused by most of the enemies having a longer reach than you.



Having a badass bird at one's command is a nice advantage though. Up+B releases Cutrus, who will then fly back and forth across the screen in a sine pattern. Press Up+B again to call him back. Pressing Down+B will make Cutrus dive downward, damaging any enemies in his path. He will return to his normal patttern after the attack. Cutrus also has his own separate health bar, but the game ends only when Orin dies. Cutrus will simply vanish until the end of the level.

If you somehow find another person willing to play this and select the multiplayer option, Player 2 will be given full control of Cutrus while Player 1 controls Orin as normal. Player 2 uses the same controls to leave and return to Orin, with the added bonus of being able to move left and right at will, as well as up and down. There is no way to make Cutrus do this while playing alone.



Walking to either side of the screen does nothing so it looks like we need to get through this huge door, but before we do that, let's order our loyal falcon to smash his face into a brick.

There are various "Jar" items scattered throughout the game, and they can only be obtained by attacking the bricks they've been hidden in. This one is only found somewhere at the entrance to each stage, and will give both Cutrus and Orin an extra bar of health and special weapon energy. There are three other jars hidden in the level to max these out.

Now we just need to get inside. There's an obvious switch by the torch on the right, so let's go stab it.



...eventually. The hit detection isn't the worst I've seen, but it does cause some problems now and then.



Heading inside, we're treated to our first view of the level, with an enemy already walking towards us. This one will walk back and forth until he sees us, then attacks by stabbing forward three times while standing in place. Nearly every enemy in the game attacks in a similar pattern.



He's not too bright, as it takes him three tries to get close enough to hit us, even though we haven't moved since entering the door.

As I said before, Orin's lack of range is a major problem for new players, but there's a nice trick you can use to get around this. Every enemy in the game flashes for about half a second after being hit. You'd expect this to be the usual invincibility bosses often have in NES games, but it actually makes them intangible. It won't last long enough for you to walk through them, but it does give you just enough time to back out of their reach after poking them.



This is how every fight with a humanoid is going to go, including about half the boss fights. Bait the enemy into walking toward you, stab just before they enter your range so they walk onto your sword, then back away. Many of them will strike back immediately, but it won't matter how long their weapon is because they can't hit you while flashing.

Heading up the stairs, we encounter the next enemy. This one has a longer reach, but can be dispatched the same way. He also has a ridiculous attack animation.



Man, what. Swords do not work like that.



Killing him makes a knife pop out, so we grab it. It then appears in the previously empty square next to the health bars as our first sub weapon. Sub weapons run on the energy in your Item bar and require pressing Up+A to use, but otherwise work as you'd expect them to from playing Castlevania. They can be selected on the pause menu or you can cycle through them with select.



Before we continue up, there's a new item hidden in this wall. As mentioned earlier by the manual, this is a Scroll of Jewel Placement, and collecting these is necessary to finish the game. Attacking it sends us to the pause menu and displays the clue.

Next Update: We take on the first level for real next time. I've covered all the basics, so we can finally move on with the game itself.

In the land of the pantsless, the man with shorts is king.

Interested to hear how this game pans out, even though I hear it's mediocre, it looks pretty cool, and the world needs more Castlevania clones, anyways.

Not like this.

Not like this!

Well, hopefully good ones in the future. 'Course, it's too late for 8 Eyes to get any redemption.

EDIT By this, I mean that it's not like the game will get any better. Certainly opinion can change over time though.

Pause!

I had this game when I was a kid. It's hard but you can cheese a lot with the falcon using controller 2.

The first thing the packaging brings to mind is that the Protagonist is not wearing pants. That and he slaying hordes of irradiated demons.

Orin is like the reverse Conan. He has every piece of clothing except the piece that shields his man-hood.

So Orin is a bigger badass then Conan?

Fashion wise maybe..

The whole radiation-indued mutant *skeletons* thing makes me really wonder if the box-copy plot was tacked on after the fact... either for the English translation or somewhere else along the line. Nothing actually in the game (so far, anyway) says "post-nuclear holocaust" to me in the slightest. Nukes destroyed the world, and everyone spontaneously decided to rebuild castles in their homelands in pre-modern styles?

If I had the time to waste on it I could hunt down at LEAST 5 other games with post-apocalyptic skeleton men. That was totally a Thing for a while.

It's not just old games.



It's not strictly a skeleton, but it that condition it really shouldn't be standing anymore, much less running around the wasteland. Somewhere along the line we picked up this idea that less flesh = greater strength, probably from fantasy settings where the whole thing is magical. It just looks silly when you add science to it, but for some reason we keep doing it.

I somehow doubt this. What makes the Great King so worthy of attaining all eight artifacts of godlike power, as opposed to the other, not-so-capitalized kings? What's the difference between any of them "taking control of the world" and the so-called Great King "guiding" it?

Face it: you're working for a conqueror, as power-mad as the rest of them. You're only working for him and calling him "Great" because he lets you stroll about with no pants.



Hey, it worked in Vampire Hunter D!

Have to agree. I mean if these artifacts are so important why send 1 pantsless warrior with a bird when you can send an army of bottom-naked warriors.

What make this King so Great anyhow?

XD

I wish I could say that was intentional but eh, it's funnier as it is.

Anyway, it's time to fight the duke of Spain.

I've thrown together a simple map of the stage, both because screenshot LPs of platformers can be hard to follow and because I had fun doing this for some reason. The clue is shown in red, while other hidden items are blue.



And from the manual...



"This castle is ruled by Enriquez Bartona. He is a master of fencing - perhaps even better than Orin. Your reward for defeating him will be a giant black pearl called the Black Butterfly of Pereshusu."

Pereshusu is not a place.



We've seen the first room already, so Orin moves up to room 2. A giant bat, one of the game's more difficult enemies, dives for Orin's head before he even gets off the stairs. Taking hits after a screen transition is going to be a common event, and having this happen in the second room of the first stage can't have helped the game's reputation any.



The bat vanishes after a few stabs, leaving behind a white cross. These restore sub-weapon power and enemies almost always drop one.



Now that the bat's gone, we can turn our attention to that knight up there. We could go up the stairs and fight him head on, but there's not much room and Orin will be backed against the wall before he can kill it, so we stab it in the shins instead.



A red ball pops out of the knight and falls next to Orin. This is the Power Ball, our second sub-weapon. I'll show these off a bit later, but right now we want that blue jar hidden in the wall. This increases our max health again, but won't fill it up like that red jar did.



Moving on to room 3, we encounter another sword guy and an archer. The other side of the wall on the right has a C jar, which restores our health a little. However, health works a bit differently in this game. If Cutrus collects it now, only he will be healed. The same goes for Orin if he stabs it while Cutrus is flying. If Cutrus is on Orin's shoulder when a health item is collected, both will be healed. I'll be coming down the other side of that wall later, so I'll leave this alone for now.

The archer takes a shot at us as we move up, but Orin is a fencing master and flicks the arrow out of the air with ease. Archers only take one hit, so we kill him and move on.



Room 4. This guy with a odd choice of clothes fights the same way as the first enemy, so we take him down. He leaves behind an Ice Ball, our third sub-weapon and the only one that really matters.



To the right is another blue jar. A knife thrower is waiting on the upper level, and is essentially no different from the archer. We block his first knife, slap the second out of his hand, and run him through, earning another cross.



Room 5 has a couple floating skull-like things and another knight. The skulls move across the room in looping motions and generally do their best impression of Medusa heads. They're fairly slow, so we ignore them.

This knight is carrying a spear, and his range makes him difficult to fight normally. Instead, we send Cutrus over there to distract him. While he's busy missing, we get in a backstab or two. He's not dead yet, but his lack of vertical reach means Cutrus can just dive into his face a couple times to end the fight.



The knight leaves behind a small red cross, which restore health. Both types of crosses come in two sizes. We also pick up another jar, maxing out our potential health and weapon power.



Room 6 is the top of the stage, and we can now cross to the other side. There's another blue jar here but we don't need those anymore. We've seen the enemies in this room before, so this is a good place to test out those sub-weapons we've been picking up. The Knife acts exactly like the ones in the game 8 Eyes is so blatantly stealing from, and a single hit takes out that archer.



The Power Ball travels in a wave pattern and moves through enemies. After taking out the second archer, we come to a gap with another knife guy below. Ice Balls are thrown in an arc and bounce along the ground until they hit something, so we toss one down. These stun enemies for a couple seconds and work on all bosses, so you'll probably want to forget about the other weapons and save that item power for the boss fights. After killing the knife guy, we start moving downward.

Just in case anyone forgot how much of a dick this game can be, a flying skull hits us before we even land in room 7. An axe knight is walking around on the lower platform, but his range is barely any better than ours. Orin takes him down and moves on.



GAH! Once again, we take a hit before Orin's feet touch the ground. Room 8 has a knife thrower waiting right in front of us, and the one from room 4 happens to be able to see through walls. Orin takes some hits, then quickly takes out the one to the right.



Down the stairs is a scary-looking man with even less clothes than usual. He's not even carrying a weapon though, so this shouldn't be a problem. Unless, of course, he's completely immune to swords. Orin isn't crouching in that last shot, he's recovering from taking a kick to the face after his sword bounces off this guy's manly chest.



Some enemies can only be damaged by Cutrus, and a single hit from the bird is all it takes in these cases. I'll just assume Cutrus went for the eyes or something. We snag another cross and move on.



Room 9 has no new enemies, but the archer up there drops a boomerang, which we toss at the knife guy down there.



The boomerang hits once, then kills him on the return. We also pick up that C jar we found earlier, restoring some much-needed health.



Room 10. Nothing special here, we'll just drop down behind that knight and



AAAAAAAH!

In this case, the game decided to be very different from Castlevania. Instead of simply dropping through the stairs by walking off the edge, Orin falls down them. Right into both the knight and bat.



Here we see Orin taking a hit. This sprite only shows up for one frame and is very difficult to grab, so you won't see it often. The rest of his "getting hit" animation just uses the falling and crouching sprites. The fight here is so intense that everyone vanishes for a moment except Cutrus, who's just chilling there. I get a large red cross out of it though, fixing most of the damage.



Room 11 has nothing interesting, so we kill everything and keep going. We've finally made our way to the boss room, and jump down to engage Enriquez.

Enriquez uses the same tactics as most humanoids, but he cycles through three different attacks.





Nothing fancy here. We get some stabs in, Enriquez backs us into the corner, Orin moves through him after taking a hit, then we throw out an Ice Ball and stab at him some more.



There's a ledge on the left side and Enriquez can't climb stairs, so we take a breather. From here, we can reach a stone containing a full heal. We can't send Cutrus after it if we want to heal Orin, but the boomerang works just as well.



Rejuvenated, Orin jumps back into the fray and gets the last hit in, causing Enriquez to flash weird colors...



and turn into the pearl. We pick it up and then...

this happens. I'm not even going to try to make sense of it. Orin sits at a table with a distinctly non-pearled Enriquez.



A skeleton waiter shows up and sets the table.



and we have ourselves some tea.

Suddenly, this game is awesome, and I feel terrible for never having played it.

Instead of jumping into the air and grabbing the orb after you take the big baddie down.

Both of you just relax with a nice tea party with Rufus the skeleton Butler serving you guys.

Why not? Orin's already established dominance, he can afford to be civil to the Duke now.

The post-battle civil discussion at tea time with a skeleton waiter has completely changed my opinion about this game! Amazing.

I was going to chime in with some statement about how the game doesn't seem very good.

Then I saw the tea-break.

And now I love it again.