Columns

Columns

Publisher: Sega

Developer: Sega

Consoles: Sega Genesis

First off, to say this game is only on the Sega Genesis is absurd, because it's not. The game was seen in arcades, TurboGrafx-16, Sega Master System, Sega CD, Game Gear, Game Boy Color, MSX 2, iPhone, DOS, Mac, Windows, Atari ST, Sega Saturn, Dreamcast, Super Famicom, Game Boy Advance, Playstation 2, Wii, XBox 360, and Playstation 3. That's not including the knock-off copycat games, either. This game is on nearly as many consoles as Tetris or Mega Man, it seems. However, the version I'm talking about today, as well as one of the most popular versions and the one that seems to be the most ported, is the Sega Genesis version, so let's just keep it at that.

OH, THAT'S where the jewels rain down from!

I fucking love this game. I'm not one to brag or toot my own horn, but I bought this game on the Virtual Console the day it came out, and had to have been the first person on the VC version of the game to hit level 99 and maxed out the cleared jewels counter. However, because I not only wasn't in the "arcade" mode, nor had a way of recording it set up, it's an achievement that has to stay quiet within me because pretty much no one else around me gave a shit as I hit level 99.

I have no reason to be bitter about it, and I'm not, but this isn't the reason why I like this game. It's a major nostalgia kick for me. I owned this gem (see what I did there?) on the Genesis growing up, and, in a family that doesn't care for gaming, I'd find the whole family taking turns to see how far we could get, or team up in the arcade mode to see who could reach a certain level the fastest.

The normal arcade mode, which allows for two player action

What IS Columns, though? It's a puzzle game back in the days where Tetris ruled the puzzle market. Very similar to the king of puzzle games, you have a rectangular playing area as tall as the screen, and you would receive a column of colored jewels that would drop slowly from the top to the bottom. They had to remain upright, hence the name COLUMNS, but you could move them about and rotate the order the pieces were in. Instead of clearing lines, you had to match three of the same color in a row, be it vertically, horizontally, or diagonally.

It seems simple, but predictably enough, the higher the level you reach, the quicker the blocks begin to fall. There's also a blinking piece that will destroy every gem of the same color it's placed upon. It adds a new level of strategy to decide what you should destroy, or what color you should work on in order to drop the height of the jewels in the playing field.

Flash Columns had you dig through lines of jewels to destroy a specific one

The music in the game, to me, is more enjoyable than the now overplayed Tetris theme (which is actually a Russian folk song, by the way). The Greek themed game has a nice soundtrack to it that I find calms me; if I'm in a bad mood or having a rough day, a quick game (or fifteen) of Columns makes me feel better. What's actually pretty interesting is that the game's pseudo-main theme, "Clotho," actually changes - hit a certain level, and the music calms down to a gentle piano rendition, done during stages that might temporarily slow down the pace in order to help the player catch up on clearing the way.

I feel this is one of the most underrated puzzle games out there today. It seems the only classic puzzle game everyone remembers is Tetris, and newer games like Bejeweled seem to be the only puzzle games played by the casual player today. However, my props go out to the FIRST jewel puzzle game, one of the best puzzle titles of all time: Columns.