Ixion

Ixion © 1984 Sega Enterprises, Limited.

The goal of the game is to grab the five white squares scattered across the screen and spell the word Ixion before time runs out.

The game screen consists of a giant grid of 110 squares on which your ship (which looks like a small tank) can travel. Your ship cannot travel over areas where squares are missing. At the start of each level only certain squares are visible, to get around easier you will need to reveal the missing squares.

Revealing the missing squares is fairly simple, one simply has to move the brown sphere over an empty square. The sphere is normally stationary, but it can be moved by shooting or ramming into it. This sends the sphere bouncing around the screen, revealing squares and destroying enemies as it goes (hence the reference to Ixion's flying wheel). After a short time of bouncing around the sphere will stop, requiring the player to move it again to reveal more squares. Learning how to move the sphere to where you want to go is the key to mastering Ixion.

Also moving around the game grid are enemy drones, which will attempt to destroy your ship. Unfortunately in addition to your ship their shots also destroy tiles, making your path much more difficult to traverse. Thankfully the drones appear to be bound by the same rules about traveling over tiles that you are, so there is no unfair advantage. Aside from using the sphere as a weapon, your ship is armed with a powerful cannon that shoots three bullets and can be aimed in eight directions and bounce off walls. Enemy drones only take one shot to defeat, but will take out the tile they are on when they explode. Also make sure you keep an eye on the timer (represented by a drone slowly moving towards your reserve ships). If the drone makes it to your reserve ships before you've spelled Ixion, you will lose a life. This timer starts to move at amazing speed on the higher levels, so don't delay in hunting down those letters!

After each level you will be treated to a small bonus round. In these rounds the screen starts out without any tiles present, but there are two spheres. Your goal on this screen is quickly reveal as many tiles as you can before the timer runs out. Since there are no squares visible at the start of the round you will only be able to shoot the spheres at first, however as more squares are reveled you can start bumping the sphere to move it around even more. If you are able to reveal all the squares (a very difficult feat) you will receive a large bonus. There does not appear to be a penalty for not revealing all the squares.

Although Ixion starts off easy, the higher rounds are very intense. Each successive round starts off with less squares visible at the start, and they're usually missing from the worst possible places. The sphere also will get placed in harder to reach locations, making it difficult to grab at the start of the round. The enemies begin to shoot faster and more often, and will respawn much faster after they are destroyed. In the higher rounds it is not uncommon to destroy more squares than you reveal, simply by destroying the rapidly respawning drones.