8-bit retrospective: 8 Eyes, the Castlevania clone that could have been good

Even if you have been gaming since the early 90s, I’d be a little surprised if you knew what game I was talking about when I say 8 Eyes. Somehow or another, child me ended up getting it for my NES collection. There are a lot of interesting and noteworthy things to say about 8 Eyes. Obviously the developers were looking at Castlevania as a template for their own game. Some factors of this include: the perspective of the action, the look of the protagonist and most enemies, the way stairs both look and function, and in particular the prevalence of a near exact looking stone block in level design. I don’t bring this up as a negative, just as an obvious note.

8 Eyes also has some flair from the Mega Man series thrown in, as there is a lineup of eight castle stages that can be picked among in any order. Also like in Mega Man, there is an advantageous order to do them in. The game is no slouch copy and paste though. Levels are varied and interesting looking, and enemies likewise look detailed and are well animated – for NES standards obviously. Music is likewise a high note, with music that stands out and fits the locales it’s paired with, even if sometimes stereotypically. It’s not really anything I’d seek out just to listen to it again, but it was memorable.

So we have a game taking cues from two popular side-scrolling action titles. It both looks and sounds good for its time. Why is this retrospective about to take a more downward tone? Despite its merits, 8 Eyes is punishingly difficult.

Game balance and difficulty were areas I think a lot of developers were really struggling with in the NES era, and that’s very much the case with 8 Eyes. For starters, you only get a single life. One … single… life. For a game with eight stages plus a final level, most of which are quite long, grueling slogs through dangerous enemies, that’s pretty extreme. Once you beat a level you can get a password allowing you to pick things up with your progress intact, although that still means you both have to beat a level on one life and necessitates entering a long password. Password-based saving isn’t around anymore for several good reasons, not least of which is that nobody wants to deal with that crap.

Next up on the extreme difficulty train: attacking. Whereas Castlevania provided a lengthy whip to fight enemies from a relatively safe distance, 8 Eyes offers no such amenity. You get a sword and its range is quite short. This requires some fancy footwork to adequately defeat enemies while avoiding damage, so lots of back and forth with hitting and retreating. Some adversaries are quite mobile too or possess a long-reaching attack, presenting significant challenges. Once you reach a boss though, if you do, care and precision tends to go out the window. The boss fights are wars of attrition: you need to do as much damage as fast as possible because these opponents are fast and unpredictable.

Assuming you are up to the challenge of triumphing over every obstacle in a single stage, you pretty much need to make use of an assortment of hidden items. These are randomly hidden, often in the middle of a wall with no clues. To help access the items, you have an animal friend. The bird is actually a pretty unique gameplay mechanic for its time. Mostly you’ll want to keep the bird perched on your character’s shoulder. At the right times though, he can be launched off to fly around and then be commanded to attack enemies or nab hidden items. The attacking part would be a lot more useful if he weren’t so fragile, hence it usually being a good idea to keep him benched.

In addition to all the things I’ve already mentioned, two levels are also particularly fiendish, requiring a very specific set of movements to proceed, naturally without any good clues.

If you beat 8 Eyes back in the day, that would be quite the accomplishment indeed. I managed it a few years ago, but only after watching a YouTube playthrough by a gamer who knew the game very well. 8 Eyes is an odd, easily overlooked page of gaming history. I wouldn’t recommend playing it and it doesn’t even have any contemporary ports to make playing it easily accessible. Giving it a watch may be interesting though. The sad part about 8 Eyes is there was a good amount of work put into the game, and with only a few easy changes it could have been much better.