Columns is a falling blocks type of puzzle where you have to match lines made of 3 same-colored jewels to destroy them. Up to 2 players, but not competetive, it's solo style one. It was originally made by Jay Geertsen in 1989 for some obscure computer and then sold rights to Columns mechanics to Sega in 1990, where they put it to use onto their arcades. And in same year Sega of Japan ported it over to Sega Mega Drive, 1 Megabit cartridge, all yay very cheap game to manufracture, having such small ROM size that it got included into pretty much every compilation too. It was the first port of many and thus may lack some options. Puzzle games tend to get onto many platforms after all.
Also came out for other platforms, such as Sega Game Gear and Master System.
Heck, it not only managed to reach Turbographx-16 (PC-Engine), but even somehow got onto SNES. Wat, Sega.
The game that you have here is nothing more than emulation of Sega Genesis version.
Now, technical part about Sega's emulation here:
The Sega Classic games that you purchase on Steam count as DLCs for "Sega Mega Drive & Genesis Classics" game that should appear in your library.
It has Bedroom HUB which is the one with many features yet lags for many and Simply Launcher which lacks Workshop and Online but at least it works just fine for everybody.
However, Simple Launcher has it's fair share of glitches as well. It can crash. And it does the second time you go to main menu, so always quit after saving there so it doesn't crash when you want to save next time!
Emulation itself, mostly sound, isn't that good but it does it's job. Also, yes, emulator supports quick saves.
As alternative, you can use external emulator to run games that you purchased. Sega kindly placed in all games that you purchased in "uncompressed ROMs" folder that program itself doesn't use, just change file extension to ".bin" or so. The file for this one being "COLUMNS_W.68K".
I also demand you to read digital manual of this game first. You can find it here on store page or go to "manuals" folder of game root and open "COLUMNS_PC_MG_EFIGS_US_150ppi.pdf".
Has online (in Bedroom HUB only) and local multiplayer.
The plot of this game is that phoenician merchants play their favourite games: destroying their own hard-earned jewels with a glee.
And yep, it's a falling-blocks puzzle game, alright. An early one. Solo play, meaning that your main objective is to stay alive as long as possible as the blocks fill more and more of a jar.
Sega (or rather Jay Geertsen's) take on this overdone-by-now-but-not-then genre is that 3-block tall columns are falling down. They can't be turned around and made up of 3 jewels of random colors (each with it's own shape). You can however cycle jewels in column before it lands. You have to make lines of at least 3 jewels of same color for them to dissapear. Vertical, horizontal and, most importantly, diagonal lines work. Gravity is still a thing, so upper jewels will fall down into freed up space.
That means that it has some chaining going on, albeit it's not something you would do on purpose as I think they only increase score. Or level. Another thing I can say is that it's harder to pay attention to all the potential diagonal lines. And somehow, it's also more exciting, as you can save yourself or chain greatly if you do pay attention to them. For example, when the jar is near full, you may manage to destroy such line only to find out that you just set of a great chain of reactions, whether intential or not. What a miracle! Fight until end!
Yea, I do think that Tetris is lacking, at least for me. Too plain, no surprises. Columns is the part where falling blocks puzzle genre got more exciting, IMO. That, or did Dr. Mario come out before Columns? That one was rad too.
It does have a big problem however in a sense that it can get too easy. The default amount of jewel types is the maximum one that you can set. If you set any less then you aren't likely to ever lose the game. The game seems to lack a harder mode or effective way to screw player out and thus if you figure out the gameplay you can stay for really long time, maybe even until you get bored.
Protip: There is nothing stopping you from pausing the game in order to think over your next move.
Setting is quite fancy, but nothing much exciting. It aims for "forgotten ancient Greek" appeal. Tries to be more on relaxing side, possibly hypnotizing. Music tries to be a strange kind of prettyness, you sure aren't going to find any drums in them. It sure is fancy, somewhat memoriable, but eh.
I am not exactly fond of Mega Drive conversion however. It's a confused mess between trying to be a direct arcade port and giving player all the custom options. For example, you can either go for Arcade mode or Original mode which are supposedly same. But Arcade has magical jewel appear sometimes and you can change "difficulty" in Options which means maximum speed. While original mode, selectable from Menu, can change amount of different types of jewels, music, starting level and even set up 3-minute time limit. But no magical jewels. Why is it not combined into same customizable thing?
Oh yea, there is also Flash mode. A single jewel must be destroyed, placed under the cutsomizable level of rows. Good fun.
And yep, there is sorta multiplayer. You can choose to play any mode in two player, in which case it will behave in interesting way, not unlike arcade game: screen is divided into two halfs and everyone is playing their own Columns in each. But same mode. Can even restart independently. No way to interact. Flash mode has a "match" setting, but it just means that whole game ends as soon as somebody wins. So yea, it's like two separate solo gaming.
Well, there is also a Double two-player mode. In this case two players play on one field and they take turns on each column of jewel. Cooperative, it says. Though you can always decide between each other that whoever's turn brings "game over" loses.
But yea. Not my favourite, but pretty nice puzzle.
