Designer: Seta
Publisher: Taxan
Release Date: January, 1990
Console ID String: NES-8E-USA
Genre: Action/Adventure
Player Options: 1 Player, 2 Play cooperative (2nd player controls the falcon)
Features: Stage Select, Passwords, 2nd and 3rd quests for harder difficulty
Review:
8 Eyes was one of those games that I used to feel was shitty. REAL shitty. But then, hey, I took another look at it, and shockingly enough, played the game all the way through. Well... once anyway (more on that later.) 8 Eyes is one of the four NES games developed by the Japanese company Seta and published by Taxan (the other 3 games developed by Seta were Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Castle of the Dragon, and F1: Built to Win); both companies have published Nintendo games from 1989-1990. Judging that they only last two years on the NES before switching to the SNES and N64 and infrequently publishing Mah-jong games and other lackluster titles that never made it to the USA , I'm going to guess they didn't have the most skilled designers or programmers in the world. Veteran NES fans who have played the above-mentioned other 3 Seta properties will realize that those games aren't exactly indicators of a GOOD company.
8 Eyes is an adventure set far in the future, after a nuclear holocaust. (How Cold-War Era is that?) From the centers of the eight nuclear explosions, eight jewels (or eyes) appeared. Using the power of the strange eight jewels, the Great King has rebuilt the world. Unfortunately, the Great King's eight dukes decide that THEY'D rather be in power; and already their disagreements threaten to plunge the world into World War IV! Each taking a jewel for himself, they banish the Great King to the nuclear wastelands. Only you, the King's most loyal and powerful guardsman and falconer, Orin, can break through the eight dukes' castles, defeat the dukes, and rescue the King.
At least that's how the game is supposed to go. Usually what happens is that you are clobbered to death before ever reaching the dukes, much less beating them, and there is a good explanation for that: this game has brutally unfair play control. Orin's sword has virtually no range. It's effectively a dagger. Look:
that's as long as Orin's sword gets. While 8 Eyes may be a layout clone of Castlevania (castle, stairs, special weapons), Orin is sadly lacking a whip, or even a powered up sword. While upon beating the boss of each castle, Orin is given a more powerful sword which REPLACES the old one, and that sword is only effective against one other boss, not any other enemies, and it still has the same range as the others. Obviously, this is a major problem, especially when the majority of enemies in the game have weapons with further ranges, are faster than you, and do more damage to you than you can do to them. This is where Seta developed it's "gimmick" for 8 Eyes. Success does not rest in plowing through the enemies as fast as possible. If you get into slugfests with your opponents, you will die very soon; there is only one of you and fifty of them. To effectively play this game, you must approach your enemy, hit him quickly, retreat, wait for him to swing his weapon blindly at you, move in immediately after he stops and hit him again, retreat, etc... Repeat until foe is dead.
That sucks.
I guess it would be tempting to say that from a reality perspective that's stupid: nobody when attacking his mortal enemy just swings his sword while standing in place, then allows himself to be struck and let his opponent repeat the cycle. Of course, this IS a video game, so some leeway is granted, but 8 Eyes' problem is that fighting every single character in the game rests on this strategy. It's not fun. It's damn annoying and difficult to pull off. Timing the blows by itself is hard enough, but to make matters worse, you life disappears so quickly it is absolutely critical is find items hidden in bricks, such as blue jars (which give you an extra block of life and item power) and other jars that fully restore your life or give you special powers for a few seconds (the latter of which are found exclusively in boss rooms.) The eight Duke Bosses present an entirely different, yet more evil challenge. These guys have more life than you, their attacks are more powerful, they are faster, and will absolutely murder you in a matter of seconds unless you know the location of the hidden jars and exactly how to fight them. This is the true downfall of 8 Eyes. One may be able to live with the bizarre strategy of hit-and-run to defeat normal enemies, but progress in the game can only to made by locating the power up jars. As annoying as it would be to clear out a room of enemies and then hit every brick searching for jars, trying to locate the jars in a boss room while simultaneously trying to avoid the Duke's attacks is freakin' impossible. Success is won by either: a) foreknowledge of the location of items (about 7-10 in each level) or b) countless hours of experimentation and brutal deaths.
I know that Japanese gamers are willing to put up with a much greater levels of challenge than American players, but I have a bad feeling Seta either didn't believe in gamer testing, or ignored their input. OR, while possibility, 8 Eyes may be the infamous "holiday" game within the video game. A story that has been passed down since the days of the 8-bit Nintendo reported that a company was working on a company, but their beta testers beat it and kept asking the programmers to make the game harder and harder. They complied and unfortunately since the the company never switched out its old testers who had mastered the game with new ones, the final version of the game, the one that actually shipped to stores, turned out to be substantially harder than anticipated. Untold masses of children bought the game and played it, only to cry to their parents that it was insanely impossible, until their parents would take them back to Toys-R-US and exchange it. Sales were horrible, and the story now serves as a warning to companies not to take the input of beta testers as the Word of the Almighty.
And to top it all off, 8 Eyes throws in challenges that make the game insane. First, while you do have the power to select your stage, the stages must be completed in a certain order. Your sword is powerful (iow, it does twice the damage) to only one other boss. If you are trying to discover the proper order by yourself, odds are stacked heavily (approx. 5040 to 1) that you will be at the wrong boss and your sword will do only the normal level of damage. At that point, you might as let the boss beat Orin to death, because if, by some miracle you win, you will have the wrong new sword and have to attack the castles out of order. This means that you will have to battle Ruth (the final Duke) with a weak sword. Bad news. Finally, to free the Great King at the altar of peace you must solve the riddle of the 8 Eyes by placing them in a certain order. How will you know the order? By collecting the seven hidden clue scrolls in the first seven levels, of course! Damn, that is not funny. The riddle itself is fairly easily to solve, provided that you have ALL seven clues, and why shouldn't you; you've been spending all your time endlessly attacking every brick in the game in the hopes that it's a hidden item!
Ugh.
I do think that 8 Eyes does have some good qualities. The graphics are done nicely, and while the palettes and design may look a little bit sloppy, each castle does have its unique look and feel. The added touch of using the falcon Cutrus to hit switches, attack/distract enemies, and get items is an inventive touch. The music is extremely good, and so is the packaging. Unfortunately, 8 Eyes will always go down in burning infamy as a game and is on so many levels, well, just too damn hard.
Graphics B+ The graphics are drawn very well here. While the characters themselves lack fine detail, the castles themselves are very distinctive, and look good, although I have a few complains here and there, mostly with the Indian castle painted mostly with a strange pinkish-purple color...
Sound/Music B+ The musical score for 8 Eyes, done in a classical style, is incredible. Each theme both stands out on its own merit but also adds the perfect flavor to each stage. You remember and will start humming the tunes. Sounds Effects are unfortunately, rather uninspired. Aside from a couple of sounds of weapons hitting flesh, sound effects are extremely rare in this game.
Play Control C- Handling Orin isn't difficult, but the falcon commands can be hard to execute properly, especially if nearby stairs. I can't help feeling that orin should be able to swing the sword faster, and his jumping ability is awkward.
Challenge A+ Even if you do manage to beat the game (if you read the FAQ you can), there is an additional 2nd and 3rd quest. Everything is the same (minus the scrolls), but the enemies in the 2nd quest movie twice as fast as before. In the 3rd quest, they move three times as fast as the first quest. This includes bosses, which makes the third quest EXTREMELY HARD to beat. Suffice to say, you will need all of your l33t gam3rz skillz to beat the extreme quests.
Packaging A Great cover art. Wish the game inside was better :) Orin and Cutrus stand above what appears to be a fallen ally as the forces of darkness surround them. Also, notice that the eight jewels are actually within the 8 Eyes logo itself. Nice touch.
Replay Value A+ I suppose your replay value will vary depending on how much you actually want to beat the game. With three levels of insane difficulty, you will be put to the ultimate test. Then again, you may turn this game off after five minutes and never touch it again.
Theme and Fun F 8 Eyes is by no stretch of the imagine fun. It is a labor, a chore. I guess the good thing would be that once you manage to beat one castle, you'll be able to beat the rest since none of them are really harder than each other.
Game Logic C- OK, I'm willing to believe that a nuclear holocaust and the misuse of the 8 eyes would make undead mutants rise from the grave and attack Orin at the orders of power-hungry dukes. But, bats and bees can fly through walls, whereas Orin and Cutrus cannot. Double standard. At least somehow both Orin and the enemies can throw items THROUGH walls. I guess metal and penetrate another metal after all. Scientists don't know jack. The enemies are smart enough to rush and attack you, but stupid enough to blindly thrust their weapon and regular intervals whilst Orin backs up and waits to counterattack. Although the 8 castles are supposed to be an the centers of the nuclear blasts, where is Russia and the USA? I find it odd that hundreds of years into the future looks exactly like the 19th century... I'd think it unwise to build castles upon nuclear explosion epicenters. After killing each Duke, you then have tea with him?! I'll believe that the skeleton can serve you (since there are skeleton warriors in the game) but then at the House of Ruth, the other Dukes are back attacking Orin again! WTF?! And finally the King (read no further if you don't like Spoilers, highlight the text to read the spoiler... is a nude demon with a cross tattooed on his head. This be a mighty strange world...
Overall D+ I just can't bring myself to give this game anything higher than this. While it has its good points and I'd like to believe Seta that good intentions when creating this semi-clone of Castlevania, 8 Eyes is just too blatantly unfair and not enjoyable to merit anything higher.
Game Goofs -
* The title on the box and instructions, "8 Eyes". The title in the game itself, "8 Eye's" (somebody didn't tell the Japanese programmers that "'s" denotes possession :) ). The title during the game ending "8-eyes". Can we have some consistency here?
*After killing each Duke (I believe it is killing him because his body disappears), you drink tea, (or coffee or brandy for all I know) served by a walking skeleton, with the Duke. OK... in the House of Ruth however, you must fight the dukes again (with whom you were having such a nice drink with). However, the dukes go out of order and you don't fight the one from Germany at all.
* The manual states the final castle as "Castle of Ruth" whereas in the game it's "House of Ruth." Also, where is this "House of Ruth"? I recall no such country.
* The manual claims that you are given only one life because "this is reality," yet Orin is able to grab power-ups by collecting crosses and become invisible...
* The manual states that the Great King was banished to the nuclear wastelands, but Orin finds him in a secret cave in the Altar of Peace.
Available Downloads
(you need to read this, trust me!)