This is reality! Let's Play 8 Eyes!

It's so dull... yet convoluted at the same time.

I think what really doomed this game to the bargain bin was the complete lack of interesting platforming. Sticking Orin and Cutrus in any of the NES Castlevanias would result is a pretty fun game, possibly even a better one, but the opposite would be terrible. Rooms 4 and 5 here are about as intense as the platforming gets. 90% of the game just serves as a flat arena to fight monsters on, which makes Cutrus a lot less helpful in battle than he should be. He's more useful than what you're seeing though, especially if you have trouble getting Orin's timing down. I'll try to show him off more when I can.

It would be like playing through Castlevania with something smaller than the Leather Whip...which would suck.

But you have what is essentially an infinite-use, controllable sub weapon to make up for it.

Ha, I was switching between this tab and the Castlevania II LP tab and for a moment I thought the map of Arabia was a map of the first castle in Simon's Quest.
So PercyCutrus is the one who's been giving Megaman, and later X, his maintenance after every foiled Wily/Sigma plot?

So this game could be almost as good as a Castlevania if the levels weren't designed so poorly? This is a romhack waiting to happen.

Hey, it worked with the NES Ninja Gaidens. Though to be fair, Ryu Hayabusa also had higher agility and more control over his jumps to compensate for a shorter attack range than the Belmonts.

Didn't help any with those goddamned birds, though. Cutrus could kick his ninja ass.

Just read this now. Very cool stuff! The Japanese story's 19th century balance-of-power intrigues involving Britain trying to maintain stability in the Ottoman Empire, plus the supernatural elements lend the game a sort of proto "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" vibe in my opinion.

Man, whatever. Citrus can't match the awesomeness of the ninja clones.

I couldn't resist.

In room 4 we come across more bats and skeletons, along with the clue for this level. Also, if you look at the previous post or the map, you'll notice that the platform I just came up through is inconsistent between screens, having 9 blocks in room 3 and 11 in this one, just in case this place wasn't confusing enough. Anyway, fighting the skeleton up here can be a problem, as Cutrus often gets hit when trying to attack them and there are two bats flying around up there.



Instead, we ignore him completely and jump to the platform on the left, while the skeleton stands there gaping at us. Farther to the left, Cutrus takes down a larger skeleton for us. It's nice to see some actual platforming for once, but missing a jump here just causes us to fall into the previous room.



This time, Orin can't hit the switch and get back to the door before it closes. There are various switches like this throughout the game, presumably to add a small puzzle element to it. Of course, the solution is always just Use Cutrus On Switch.



Room 5 has another pit, and a moving platform! Ok, so it doesn't look like much, but for this game it's about the most excitement we can expect from the level design. Orin rides across and jumps down to a lower block, revealing a healing jar. Unlike the previous room, falling into this pit just leaves Orin standing on the bottom of the screen, gradually taking damage. It seems odd now, but we'll get back to that in a bit.



Orin stabs a skeleton in the foot, Cutrus kills the ranged one, you've seen it all before. Wait...



Orin's sword arm seems to have trouble keeping up with the rest of him. Pull yourself together man, we've got mutants to slay!





More skeletons, more bats, more stairs. We've only seen them in four rooms and they've already managed to get old. Room 6 has the last blue jar.



Just to spice things up, Orin tosses a knife at one of them. Of course it passes right through, dealing no damage. I'd say that actually makes sense, but Orin's stabbing at them too and somehow that works, so I guess he's just that good. Or he's magic. Or this game is just silly and I should stop thinking about it.

This room is open at the top, so falling down from the previous room would have been a nice shortcut had the designers allowed it. They could have done something sensible like...not leave it open, but of course they had to go and make up special rules for the pit above just to confuse everyone further.



This time, we'll have to release Cutrus mid jump so he'll be high enough to hit the switch, but what's this? Orin just threw another knife! It just so happens that this game doesn't distinguish between Up+A and A+Up, so pressing Up+B while still holding A to jump causes Orin to waste a sub weapon if you've got one equipped. At least we got Cutrus up there, so we head inside to face...

The master of this castle is Ghadie Rashal. He is an expert knife thrower, and has a very nasty disposition! When you defeat him, you will get a white Diamond called the Tear of the Nile.



Rashal here seems to be channeling the Belmont walk.



He attacks exactly as Enriquez did, except with a different moveset. He starts off with a wild horizontal swing, presumably just to show off, as we haven't moved since entering the room yet he didn't bother getting close enough to hit us.



He then takes a step forward and attacks with an overhead swing, which would be dangerous if we hadn't just tossed an Ice Ball into his face. Walking past him, we head for the nearby stairs. Rashal gets the last laugh though, as he throws two daggers for his third attack, pegging us in the leg.



However, once we make it to the top we have the fight under control. As with all bosses, Rashal can't climb stairs, while we have a staircase on each side and plenty of gaps to work with.



We wait for Rashal to move to the left side, then drop down and engage him with plenty of room behind us.



His daggers need to be ducked under, but otherwise this isn't much different from the previous boss, or even a skeleton for that matter. Without the damage bonus from choosing the correct path, we can only deal 1/4 of a health bar's worth of damage per hit. This isn't really a problem, as we end up bringing him most of the way down even after taking plenty of daggers to the face while trying to get screenshots. Eventually, the fight moves closer to the other side of the room and we run up the stairs to avoid getting trapped.



We wait for Rashal to move offscreen, then jump down and grab the health refill hidden here. It's not a full heal like the red jars, but it's more than enough for this fight. We wait for Rashal to return, then jump down again.



After a few more stabs, Rashal is down to his last sliver of health. Cutrus has been sitting there with nothing to do this whole fight, so we let him take the last strike.



This time, we try to grab the gem from the air like a pro. It turns out Orin can't collect it until it hits the ground, but something strange happens. Orin actually stands on top of the gem for a moment, then slips off. Apparently the thing is just a sprite-swapped platform.



It remains solid after it lands too, as Orin jumps on top of it and kneels as though he had just landed on something. Then, as always, a happy skeleton butler arrives to serve us tea while Orin glares menacingly across the table. That's right Rashal, I've got the gem now. Don't even think about...um...what was I stopping him from doing again?

Next Update: Italy, Africa, Germany, Egypt, and India remain. Orin's next destination is up to you.

My favorite thing about the post boss fight teatimes is the fact that the cups appear to be boss size, which seems to mean about the size of Orin's head.

Sir Julian James Bond adheres to local customs as befitting a gentleman agent.

It also helps that he has a crippling Tea addiction.

I vote to do Germany next.

Happy Skeleton Waiter is so awesome I've stole him as my avatar.

All these buildings are too stuffy. My vote goes to Africa, for a more sadistic scenic route.

Why is there Africa and Egypt? My geography isn't what it used to be, but isn't one a continent containing the other? In this mad post-apocalyptic wasteland, has Egyptian scientists declared Egypt to be its own seismic continent?

I guess what I'm trying to say is I vote you take on Africa next.

Somewhere in Africa (that isn't Egypt), Orin begins his quest for the third jewel.



There's an S-Jar hidden in the top right corner of the door frame. With nothing else do do out here, we head inside.



The enemies in room 1 seem standard enough. We get another poorly dressed human carrying a spear, and green bird-like things to replace the bats from earlier. Since we don't seem to have a choice, we drop down the hole in front of us. Right away, we can tell there's something odd about room 2. There are stairs leading back up to room 1, yet we didn't see any while we were in there.



So naturally we're going to try climbing them, and immediately take a bird to the face for our efforts. We also find ourselves not in room 1, but in one identical to room 2. Alright then, let's try that hole over there.



Room 2 again. And again. And again. If you hadn't guessed by now, this is a Lost Woods sort of deal, but there's no clue how to solve it anywhere in the game, and as an added insult you'll take unavoidable damage from that bird anytime you try to go up. There's another room on the other side of the right wall (we'll call it 3), but we don't have any way to reach it.



The solution is pretty simple though. Leave the room by using the stairs once, then drop through the hole twice. We've done the first two steps, so we just need to go through the hole again. There's also a blue jar hidden in the top right wall.



Room 4, or at least what we can see of it from here. It should be clear by now that the rules have changed drastically for this level. We now have multiple exits to pick from, so let's drop down and have a look.



There's a blue jar hidden here, and Cutrus takes out the spear guy while collecting it. There's a switch over there, so Orin hits it. Unfortunately, there's no door within sight, and we can't jump back out of here.



Dropping down, we end up in...room 1? This stage absolutely refuses to make sense, but at least we can explore the rest of the room now.



There's a clue hidden here, so we snag it.



A spear guy sneaks up on us while we're doing that, and we discover that these are another Cutrus-only enemy. Fortunately, he drops a big health restore for us.



There's another one on the upper platform, so we'll just go up there and...take a spear to the face, because despite having the same sprite, this one's different! However, we know by now that all ranged enemies only take one stab to kill, so we cut him down and head upstairs.



Room 5 has two new enemies. There are tiny red mosquito-ish things with the same movement pattern as the flying skulls, and big, possibly naked dudes that throw rocks.



Once again, ranged enemies are always weak. Even worse, this one usually throws his rocks right over Orin's head. I'm just going to assume he's wearing black underpants so I don't have to think about the alternative.



We don't have a choice here, so we drop down, find a full health refill, and go down the stairs. We end up in room 1 again, this time on the ledge we couldn't reach before. The spear guy holds onto his weapon this time, so we send Cutrus at him. He drops a boomerang for us (which we'll never use) and Cutrus picks it up as he comes out of the dive.

We go up the stairs, end up on the other side of room 5, snag a Power Ball (to decorate our pocket with) from the rock thrower here, and continue up.



We can see the right side of room 4 now, so we'll try dropping down the hole here. Once again, we end up in room 1. There's another path we haven't tried, but it's on the other side of the room.



Luckily it's not impossible to jump the gap here, just difficult. A pixel perfect jump (no, it wasn't my first try) gets us to the other side so we can try the downward stairs.



We've made it to room 3, but right away we've got birds and spears flying at us.



Orin blocks the spear, stabs another, then kills him from the platform, finally earning that Ice Ball we've been waiting for.



Now that we've gained some breathing room, there's another blue jar to collect. This is in fact the same one we got from the other side in room 2, but for some reason it can be collected once from each room. There's two sets of stairs to try, so we go down the right one.

For the players who made it past room 2, this is the point where I'd expect most people to ragequit. We've found the door, but the only way in are some stairs leading up through the floor, which we can't seem to find anywhere. Now what?



Here's the level map. I've made it bigger because it's pretty important this time. Those new half-blocks represent holes that can be dropped through from one direction, leading to a different room than they should. If seen from the side Orin doesn't travel through, they appear as a solid block. Room 2 has a similar thing going on. Rooms 1 and 5 wrap to each other, and otherwise the place behaves normally. You can also see that the door should be accessible through room 5, but there are no stairs leading up there.



You could spend days trying to find a sensible solution and never figure it out. The answer is actually in room 3. Going down the left set of stairs leads to the exit from room 2, and coming back up gives us an alternate version of room 3. The spear guy drops a knife this time (also useless), and going up the stairs...



brings us to the door.



I found some better scans from the manual, so I'll update the previous pics later. I guess we're in Zimbabwe then?

There's a G-Jar here, which grants invincibility. To get the best use out of it, we want to lure Amin as close as possible. He throws an axe at us the moment he enters the screen, then walks foward. However, once we reach the other side of this barrier he'll stand there glaring at us all day. His attack pattern requires us to be near him or him to have space to move, so this throws him off.



Once we grab the jar we start glowing strange colors. Drinking every liquid we find in a jar may not be the smartest idea, but in this case it pays off, as we can now go on the offensive for a few precious seconds.



We end up walking through him during this, and take a full four bars off before the effect ends.



Now we have to start caring about what Amin's doing. He starts with two overhead swings, takes a step forward, throws two axes, then moves back a bit. The axe throwing is dangerous not so much for the axes, but because his arm can hit us even if we try to duck under it. Orin needs to back away a bit and then duck to avoid both.



But screw that, we've got Ice Balls! Orin goes on the offensive again, with little concern for his health.



Ice Balls take a lot of energy, and Orin tries to throw another only to realize that he's already out. He takes a smack in the face for his stupidity, then the fight begins for real, with both combatants down to their last bar.



Orin finishes the fight just in time.



Uh. Hmm. Maybe we hit him a little too hard there, as we seem to have stabbed the color right out of him. He doesn't look too happy about it, but Skeleton Waiter is as cheerful as ever!

Next Update: Three down, four to go. pick whatever you like, but expect another long wait between updates if you send me to Germany.

So an infintiely repeating dungeon with no real clues to tell you where you're going?

Oh 8 Eye's. You are surely a game.

It's funny how little touches like tea-time with the boss can make a mediocre game unique. It appears to be the same skeleton butler in every scene, so does he/she work for Orin or what? Probably the best way to go on living (Or, uh, unliving) considering all the skeletons you've re-slaughtered on your quest.

Anyway, you're already in Africa so I say knock over Egypt while you're in the neighborhood.

Go to Egypt. Might as well get both of the gems on this continent in a row. BTW, isn't it kind of odd that the gem for Arabia is called the "Tear of the NILE" when there's also a separate Egypt level and the Nile isn't even on the Arabian peninsula?

LOL WUT?

I kinda feel sorry for King Amin now. You scared the proud warrior white. =(

...Wait, who am I kidding? The Africa stage sucks and those crappy unexplained trick rooms are why. If anything, Amin turned white because of all the blood loss from Orin rage-stabbing him after spending half an hour trying to figure out how to progress from the endless stairs room. >=(

While you're in the neighborhood, go kick that Egypt guy's ass and rob some pharaoh graves.

P.S. It's still ridiculous how Cutrus-exclusive foes all tend to be mostly naked guys. Are Orin's swords made out of NERFium? o.O;

RE: King Amin's loss of color, I think that it might be some sort of palette issue involving the skeleton butler, seeing as White!Amin and the skeleton are the same color.

The Spain boss had a unique color as well, and he got to keep it for the tea scene. Maybe someone more knowledgeable than me can provide a reason why he couldn't keep his color, but otherwise I'm chalking it up to a glitch or plain laziness.