assembly - MIPS Branching issue -

i'm doing project in mips; create wanted long employed requirements. anyway, chose trivia program, has been difficult not impossible. ran problem today branching.

increscore:      add     $t9, $t9, 1             #increment incr. counter     add     $t8, $t8, 1             #increment counter     move    $v0, $t8                    #move $v0      beq     $v0, $s2, eqtwo         #counter=2, question 2     beq     $v0, $s3, eqthree           #counter=3, question 3     beq     $v0, $s4, eqfour            #counter=4, question 4     beq     $v0, $s5, eqfive            #counter=5, question 5     bgt     $v0, $t8, etally            #counter>5, etally  decrescore:      add     $a3, $a3, 1             #increment decr. counter     add     $t8, $t8, 1             #increment counter     move    $v0, $t8                    #move $v0      beq     $v0, $s2, eqtwo         #counter=2, question 2     beq     $v0, $s3, eqthree           #counter=3, question 3     beq     $v0, $s4, eqfour            #counter=4, question 4     beq     $v0, $s5, eqfive            #counter=5, question 5     bgt     $v0, $t8, etally            #counter>5, etally  etally:      beq     $t9, $s5, ewin          #if increment counter = 5, branch easy win     bltu    $a3, $s5, eloss         #if decrement counter < 5, branch easy loss 

variables initialized in main:

    li  $s0, 0                      #init score     li  $s1, 1                      #constant; menu num; answer num     li  $s2, 2                      #constant; menu num; answer num     li  $s3, 3                      #constant; menu num; answer num     li  $s4, 4                      #constant; menu num; answer num     li  $s5, 5                      #constant; counter compare point     li  $s6, 6                      #constant     li  $s7, 7                      #constant     li  $t0, 8                      #constant     li  $t1, 9                      #constant     li  $t2, 10                 #constant; counter compare point     li  $t3, 11                 #constant     li  $t4, 12                 #constant     li  $t5, 13                 #constant     li  $t6, 14                 #constant     li  $t7, 15                 #constant; counter compare point     li  $t8, 0                      #question counter     li  $t9, 0                      #increment counter     li  $a3, 0                      #decrement counter     li  $a1, 100                    #constant 

issue presenting instead of questions (those eqnums) running course , counter incrementing or decrementing fully, if @ time 1 question wrong, etally branch off loss. results in rest of questions being cut off/not run , main menu popping up. tried doing 'blt' instead of 'bltu' , tried using increment counter instead of both increment , decrement counters found none of these solves problem.

code 1k lines here link full source code. easy section lines 165 299.

figured out help! jester right- $t8 initialized 0 instead of 1 , throwing off!