Columns
Three falling gems, a few seconds to think, and a screen that fills up relentlessly — Columns is Sega's answer to the puzzle fever that swept the entire gaming world in the early nineties. A simple principle, endless addictiveness, and colors that literally glow on the Game Gear.
You'll grasp the rules in a second: columns of three colored stones fall from above, you can shuffle their order, and you stack them onto the play field. As soon as you line up three or more matching stones next to each other — horizontally, vertically or diagonally — they vanish. The magic lies in the chain reactions: a cleverly set-up move can trigger a cascade in which whole clusters of stones disappear at once and the scoreboard shoots up. That joy of a well-timed chain is exactly what makes Columns a game where 'just one more round' means midnight.
On the Game Gear, Columns is right at home — the color screen makes the different gem types instantly distinguishable, and the short, intense sessions fit the nature of pocket gaming perfectly. It's an ideal title for a moment's wait that can easily stretch into hours.
Columns was an important player for Sega in an era when puzzle games were enjoying a golden age thanks to the enormous success of Tetris. It became one of the company's flagship puzzle brands and appeared on a whole range of platforms, securing a permanent place among the classics of the genre.
Anyone who took to the principle of arranging and clearing colored shapes will find in Columns a perfectly polished, purely addictive brain-teaser that has never aged.
Why play it: A perfectly addictive puzzle classic from Sega with chain reactions and colors made for a pocket screen — the ideal 'just one more round' game.
Game 20 of 39 for SEGA Game Gear
The same title elsewhere (1)
The SEGA Mega Drive/Genesis version offers full color and a clear, smoothly running playfield just as players remember it from the arcade cabinets - ideal for long, focused sessions built purely on quick reflexes and split-second decisions. The version for the handheld Game Gear had to show less of the playing field at once due to its smaller screen, which makes the game feel a bit more hectic and harder to read, even though the Game Gear's own color screen could still display the falling gems vividly. Controls are essentially identical on both machines, so the real difference lies in how comfortable the small screen is to play on the go. For relaxed play at home, reach for the Mega Drive version; the Game Gear suits those who want to take Columns along on the road.
