This is reality! Let's Play 8 Eyes!

Italy sure is full of overweight fetish enthusiasts.

This was just the best.

To Germany! Since Italy's been defeated, they no longer have any allies in Europe! We can defeat Hitler and end the war!

Where are his paaants!?
He looks okay while standing, but while crouching...
This game really needs to be more careful with its use of flesh tones.
Anyways, how much damage were you actually doing each stab, now that you had the proper sword?
EDIT: Also, India.

Orin dealt half a bar of damage with each hit instead of a quarter bar, which is why you didn't see any ice balls thrown during this one. Orin already had the health advantage when the invincibility wore off, and could just power through him.

Geno looks like Frankenstein. Except... with no pants.

And I think I much prefer the look of a Frankenstein with pants, thanks.

To Germany! I demand Liebkuchen with my post boss fight tea.

My vote goes to India. It'll be nice to see the difference a weakness sword makes with at least one boss.

someone make me an avatar out of yoga.

Okay

Go get some gems in Bavaria, where the trees are made of wood.

In my mind they just fazed out, Dragon Ball Z style

[insert "Over 9000" joke here]

India, please. Let's save Hitler Fuhrer for last.

Here we go, the final two stages of 8 Eyes. This took longer than expected to get back to (aside from general procrastination), since I managed to get halfway through a post about Germany before realizing that you all voted for India! Good news is, the rest of the game will be wrapped up rather quickly now that the next post is almost finished as well. On with the show!





India's a nice, simple stage, except that the starting item is once again out of reach without a second player, and is also a normal blue jar instead of the full restore one. Odd, but it won't matter since we can't have it anyway.







There's not much here we haven't seen before, so this post is going to move a bit more quickly. We slog through a few Scimitar Sams, stab Jack Knife, and get a knife of our own from Shrimp. The raised block at the end of the upper platform gives us our first Blue Jar.





Room 2 is more of the same. Shrimp gives us the Ice Ball this time, but what's this? Scimitar Sam seems to have taken up knife throwing!



...oh. This is not a good spot to be in, so Orin tries to back away for a moment. I'd like to be able to say that he bamfed away ninja-style leaving Cutrus standing on Sam's sword, but the, erm, reality of the situation is that I was stupid and got hit. The enemies are wrapped up swiftly regardless.



The Blue Jar is in a less obvious place this time. I'm not sure if I mentioned it before, but Orin can walk across the spot an item used to be in as though it were still solid. Cutrus has to be released before climbing the stairs to open the door.





If I remember correctly, this is Hardball's only appearance in the game, and he's one of my favorites, with that crazy Wily hair that tapers down into mutton chops. Unfortunately he's also another Cutrus-only enemy and is dead before he can finish his first swing. Since he's already had plenty of practice, I let him kill that Snaggletooth as well, which he can do with four hits. This is also the only time we encounter Spit in the game. Spit has the same pattern as all other enemies, but his fire attack has a long animation, giving us plenty of time to kill him once Cutrus distracts him. There's an S Jar hidden in the block above that torch on the upper right.





Again, nothing new here. The nameless pitchfork-wielding guys will jab at us forever if they see us from across those gaps and have longer reach, but Cutrus (who's been seeing quite a lot of action today!) handles them just fine. The upper one drops a Boomerang, which promptly falls into the hole and vanishes before we get to it.



We pick up another Blue Jar while we're down here, and I included a shot of Cutrus killing a bat since there's not much else to take screenshots of before leaving.

The first Rock here gives me a Molotov Cocktail, so I use it on Snaggletooth because, well, why not. I squeezed the item and Cutrus opening the door into the same shot. Efficiency!





The next room is just three Claws, so for the sake of variety they get stabbed, beaked, and knifed in that order. We finally get the clue scroll in the middle of the stairs.







Nasim seems threatening at first what with the teleporting and all, but he's really the easiest boss in the game once you know what's up. It also helps that the item here is right above your head when the fight starts. While flipping through my screenshots, I noticed Orin and Cutrus gave their best "It's ON" stance right after revealing the item.



Nasim's attack pattern is to throw two magical shuriken things, step forward, throw two more, then vanish. This is done by making the sprite blink a few times, so I can't show it here. He'll reappear somewhere randomly within the level and start over. The thing is, he lobs those projectiles way over your head, so as long as you move forward instead of trying to run away he'll rarely hit you.



Since we have the correct weapon again, Orin is dealing half a bar of damage with each hit. After getting the Z Jar, he'll take off an entire bar. If you don't understand how much of a difference that makes, just look at the results.



As soon as the battle starts, Orin grabs the jar and throws an Ice Ball. Ice Balls take two bars of item power to use and I walked in here with six, so we've got two more shots left. Orin begins the stabbing.



Cutrus is still flying around, so we use him to distract Nasim. Orin gets a couple more hits in while Nasim is attacking Cutrus, then uses the remaining Ice Balls to keep him from teleporting while we hack his life bar down to nothing in seconds. Nasim only lived long enough to get his first four shots off. He was probably killed in less time than it took you to read this paragraph.



Now that that little speed bump is done with we'll be moving on to Germany, then finally tackle that mysterious House of Ruth.

A teleporting yoga master? ... Street Fighter 2 totally ripped off 8 Eyes!

No, he TRANSPORTS himself.
The lost art of transportation is truly strange and mystifying.

And very easily mistaken for teleportation...

Transport: To carry from one place to another; convey.

Teleport: Transport by dematerializing at one point and assembling at another.

Nasim does indeed have the power to transport himself, along with anyone else who has feet. It's the sentence after that which tells you he also has a fancy way of doing it.

So here we are at the last of the normal stages, Germany. Once again, the jar is out of reach and once again, it's blue so we don't care much anyway.



The first room seems pretty straightforward. We've got some steps leading up and some platforms that lead nowhere.



I can't remember if these have shown up elsewhere, but Wings comes in two forms, and this one is ranged. Unlike most ranged enemies, he still takes three hits to kill. We get a gun from him and move on.



The room above contains Jabber and some Hot Heads, nothing we can't deal with by now.



This room has the melee version of Wings and...that's it. There's a switch in here, but the door's behind a wall and there's nowhere else to go.

This is where Germany shows itself to be arguably the most dickish level in the game. Africa was certainly bad, with that Lost Woods style room and maze-like setup, but this beats it for sheer complexity. Let's get started.



First, we need to head back to the first room. That extra bit of platform is there to get you above the three holes in the ground, which in fact lead to the rest of the level. We'll try the one on the right first.





Nothing new here. There's a Blue Jar to the right and we can get a Molotov from the gold Wings, but our only option from here is to drop to the lower left, which takes us...right back to the dead-end room from earlier. Once again, we walk back to the main room.





I'm not sure which enemy this is supposed to be. He might be Baldy, but he does have some hair... Anyway, he gives us the Ice Ball and that's all we really care about here. Since we've got a choice this time, we take the stairs up. Though the next room is open on the top left, for some reason we can't walk beyond it. At least we get a jar for our trouble.



We drop down the large hole from earlier, bringing us, yet again, to the rooms above the main one.



Since the other holes led us nowhere, our last chance is the small one in the middle. This first room is simple, but contains another jar on the right side. The room below is the same one we got the Ice Ball in, except we're in the lower part this time. We've got a door and a Clue Scroll to the left, and a hole to the right. Both options are one-way, so we'll take the hole.



This drops us right in front of a Jabber, and after killing it we find ourselves in the main room. Again.

I think it's time we consulted the map.

There it is, the entire hideous mess of a level. Holes are colored to show where they lead, so falling through a hole in the floor will drop you out of the hole of matching color in the ceiling. Vertical arrows show where staircases are linked, while horizontal ones show exits for the doors of the same color, as well as the usual red arrow for the entrance. If this makes sense to anyone else, you'll see that the reason we couldn't walk through that open area earlier is that it's actually the exit for the blue door. The path to the boss door is the longest, leading us through every room at least once.



We start by heading back down the middle hole and taking the green door in Room 4. This takes us to the other side of Room 6. The stairs lead us to two items, but we already collected those so we'll head down, to the right side of Room 1.



There's an S Jar here, and this door leads back to where we've been, so we head down, and down, and down, eventually dropping us in the upper portion of Room 5.



Jumping across the hole and taking the stairs leads us to the right side of Room 3. The hole to the left drops us back into the top of the same room, right in front of the boss door.



Orin takes the final jar, Cutrus hits the switch, and we're finally ready for the boss fight.







Despite the manual's claims, Walter keeps a straight face throughout the fight. His pattern is to throw two stars, run back a few steps, and repeat. We can jump up there and chase him against the back wall, but his stars can't be avoided easily.



Their patterns are random, and one of them will often loop or slow down before coming toward us, forcing us to dodge two at once from various angles. Scary as this may seem, there are actually multiple ways of beating Walter without having to deal with that.



Hiding here prevents his attack from triggering, so he'll walk back and forth across the upper platform until we get his attention via a stab to the ankles. Do this when he's near the edge, and his stars will go right over us. This can be repeated safely as long as we don't actually touch him, but it takes a long time. This is also the most cowardly tactic, so we'll try something else.



We also have a Z Jar waiting right there on the steps, so grabbing it just as he gets close and stunning him with Ice Balls lets us get a lot of damage in quickly, after which we can just keep up the pressure and win the damage race. You've seen me do this to bosses before though, so we're not going with that either.



By rushing toward him immediately and dodging a couple stars, we can force him against the back wall. I've just told you that this is dangerous, but if you get the timing down you can actually stab every star out of the air just as he throws it, step in for a hit, then back away and repeat.



This is slightly faster than camping on the stairs and is very difficult to do while taking screenshots, but even with the occasional mistake we end the fight with plenty of health to spare. Surprisingly, Walter actually keeps his color palette for the tea break.



We're not done yet though. There's a screen you haven't seen yet, because it hasn't been relevant until now.



Pressing select on the stage select screen brings up a list of the clues we've found so far. Now that we have them all, it's time to solve the puzzle. After collecting the last gemstone from Ruth, we'll have to place a stone in each of the eight slots on the Altar of Peace. You didn't forget about the plot did you?

It's pretty simple, but you guys might as well solve it since you didn't get to pick a stage this time. Just spoiler your answers if you want to discuss it.

Did we ever hear what the last gemstone was? The cover makes it look like there are two diamonds, but I guess one is supposed to be . . . blue sapphire perhaps?

Anyways.

Yellow, White, Green, Orange, 8th gem, Purple, Red, Black

Professor! I've solved it! Yellow, White, Green, Orange, Blue?, Purple, Red, Black.

Edit: And bah, ninja'd while I was making sure Luke was in-line.

Ruth is holding the last gem so you haven't seen it or her manual entry yet, but it's a blue diamond.

Presently the above solution. I was thinking there was one too few clues, but no; this is sufficient.

I'm guessing
Yellow White Green Orange Blue Purple Red Black
and it seems we are all in agreement

For those wanting a step-by-step:
1_2_3_4_5_6_7_8Black:Black is on far right
1234567Red8Black is next to red
123456Purple 7Red 8Black Purple is next to red
123Green456Purple7Red8Black Purple and Green are separated by two jewels.
White is next to Yellow, but Yellow is not between White and Black so Yellow is on White's Left. There are two two-jewel spaces now for YW, but "White, Orange, and Purple are all separated" so it cannot go in 4-5. So, it goes in 1-2.
1Yellow2White3Green 456Purple7Red8Black
Likewise, Orange must be in 4 now, leaving 5 for blue.

Here we are, the gates of the House of Ruth. We're given no clue as to where this is supposed to be, but Orin seems to have found it just fine. Ominously, we begin the stage with max health and all sub-weapons. For reasons known only to the insane developers of this mess, there's a Blue Jar hidden here that will do absolutely nothing for us.

Now, the House of Ruth is actually just a boss gauntlet, which makes this update a bit awkward for me. I've already shown you these fights, there's not much else I can do with them, and they're easier this time around since most of them have a full restore item hidden in their rooms. So, for this section I'll skip to Ruth herself in the screenshots, and leave you with a video of the entire fight. I had some trouble recording the audio, and have determined that my sound card is the culprit and there's nothing I can do about it for now. To (somewhat) fix this, I've added the music you would normally hear when fighting these bosses in their own stages, in addition to that heard during the battle with Ruth and the stage entrance. Normally, you would hear the same boring music for the entire thing until reaching Ruth, so consider it a bonus.

For these fights, I start out by showing you the pattern you should be using to beat each boss normally, then fool around a bit or just tear into them since there's a free heal available for all the hard ones. Otherwise I'm not doing anything special, this is just a straight run I recorded after doing it once to find the healing items.

House of Ruth

A few notes on this section before we move on:

-Each boss leaves behind a cross that restores your health, though you don't have to touch it and in fact can't interact with it at all. The door automatically opens when you win and you can't flip the switch yourself.

-The healing item in the fight with Rashal (Arabia) is all the way in the upper right. I left Cutrus up there intending to have him get it for me, but he tends to treat that area as a wall. It's possible for him to get it that way, but you have to start the dive early.

-Geno's (Italy) panther is now confined to the top of the screen, and the full heal is within easy reach, making this far easier than it should have been.

-Nasim's (India) room has two extra doors (one offscreen to the right) which seem to serve no purpose.

-Amin (Africa) is much easier to hit from the right side due to the way his walking animation works.

-Walter (Germany) doesn't even appear in these fights.


Now...







Ruth herself only has one attack, but it's a tough one to beat. She'll throw her whip forward once between each step, leaving you very little room to get a hit in. Get too close, and you won't have time to back away before the stun wears off. Miss, and you won't be able to escape before the whip hits. However, she too has a healing item in her room and with that you can Ice Ball your way to victory.







But it's not over yet. There's still the Alter of Peace and the mystery of the jewels to contend with.



Cutrus acts as your cursor for this part, flying between the jewel holders and placing them for you. You must place them in the order they're shown, so we have to start with White.



Looking good so far.



Ah, crap. Turns out Purple looks very much like a slightly darker blue, and they give you that one first. There's no penalty for failure though.



There we go. The screen shakes around a bit, the wall opens, and we find...



CONGRATULATIONS ORIN!! In fighting your way through the eight perilous castles, you have proved that your swordsmanship and falconry talents are great. In solving the riddle of the eight jewels, you have proved your skill as a logician. These were great tests of skill, and only the strongest of warriors and the wisest of scholars could have completed this quest.

Yeah, sure. Who the hell are you? Are you the Alter of Peace, or is the Great King actually a red demon with a cross on its forehead?! Why are you talking about this like it was some kind of test? Am...am I the Great King?

I realize that there is only one thing more gratifying that coming to the end of a great game, that is realizing the challenge has just begun. Go now Orin, another quest awaits. In this second adventure, your skills will be tested as never before. If you are truly skilled, you may be able to finish some of it !

GOOD LUCK ! Here is the password to the most challenging adventure of your life !

PASSWORD
TAXANTAXAN
push start key

Oh no. Nonononono. Really? A second quest? And thanks for the vote of confidence by the way. I may finish some of it huh? Alright then, we're gonna go do just that.

Well, well. You managed to beat the second challenge of 8-Eyes. Unbelievable ! Your video game talents are among the best the world has to offer. You confronted the challenge I set for you, and triumphed undisputed. You have beaten one of the hardest games you will ever play, or have you??



Oh yeah, you all know what "or have you?" means. There's a third quest, but this time no password is given, and the end scenes just loop around.

And by the way, you aren't missing anything. There is no ending, no cutscenes, no dialogue beyond what I've shown you. The plot is never explained or concluded. THIS IS REALITY!!1!



The only way to access the third quest is to enter "FINALSTAGE" as the password. Now, the only difference between each quest that I can tell is that the speed of the enemies increases, the enemy-spawning doorways now spawn more, and the clue scrolls are gone. Naturally, continuing the game with screenshots will show you nothing, so where we go from here is up to you. I can go through the game and just show you a few particularly difficult sections (and the third quest is VERY difficult), I can make another video of the boss gauntlet so you can see the speed difference, or I can even go through the whole game again in video. Of course, I'm going to have the same sound issues and I'm not going to talk over it even if I could (I have no experience with this and I'm an awkward speaker), so you'd just be watching gameplay. Otherwise, I can show you the ending of the third quest and that'll be that. It's your choice.

I say do whatever is easiest for you, this game looks brutal enough as is much less without the difficulty spike of the third quest.

Oddly enough, showing the entire game again in video would be a breeze compared to working with screenshots, since I'd just record each stage in one go rather than having to edit anything together. The video takes only as long to make as it does to beat the stage, plus adding music. If we go that route I'd just post one stage per day (roughly 5-8 minutes each) and knock it out in a week. I'd still be talking about the game in the posts of course.

If that's more than you want to watch and you'd rather just see one final post with a few highlights, I'd probably end up recording the whole game anyway and cut together the parts I want to show, so it'd take roughly the same amount of time to finish.

The difficulty of the game itself is only a minor issue here, as doing each quest on cartridge was what made me want to LP it in the first place.

How about a comparison video? You could go through the same stage (or the same bit of stage) on all three quests and show how the difficulty increases.