Columns™ III

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Columns 3: Revenge of Columns is competitive-only falling blocks puzzle game for up to 5 players. I have no idea how inanimate objects can have revenge and why. Maybe Puyos punched them right into jewels. It's clearly inspired by Puyo Puyo with competitive only play, no solo play. No worries, has single-player campaign. The 5 players was done with Team Player peripheral which had 4 ports and could be inserted into single one, with console having only two ports. The game was developed by Sega of Japan and Minato Giken in 1993 and probably would have stayed in Japan but Vic Tokai published it in 1994 in US. Exclusive to Mega Drive, not arcade port. 4 Megabit ROM.

If you wonder “where is Columns 2”; it was arcade-only title. Focused on Flash Columns and Versus with players able to attack each other.

The game that you have here is nothing more than emulation of Sega Genesis version. Western version that removed 2-on-2 mode. It was like 1-on-1 but other two players were supports, playing rock-paper-scrissor to get the prize to their side.


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 "Columns3_USA.SGD".
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 "COL3_PC_MG_EFIGS_US.pdf".

Has online (in Bedroom HUB only) and local multiplayer.

These emulators also support only up to 2 players. You have to use your own for more players.


Welcome to the COLUMNS world! We have chicken mascots!

So, you know the basic rules of Columns. Each block that you get is a vertical column made of 3 jewels of random color that you fill your board with. You can only rearrange jewels inside If any jewel ends up over the top of board you lose the game. If single-colored jewel happen to be on a single horizontal, vertical or diagonal line with at least three of them then they get removed. As a result of jewel falling down afterwards you could set up chains, which also could get unpredictable as diagonal lines keep various pattern less than obvious. Good fun.

However, albeit Columns 2 is the first one to have it, there is now a Crush Bar attack that cost 10 points for a single bar. You get points by removing jewel lines, getting a lot more if you do chains or have more than 3 jewels in a line. After that you can press A to attack player to the left or C to attack player to the right which uses as much of points as possible. You can have only up to 30 points. Upon attack opponent's floor bar will rise one row, your one will lower one row and opponent's currently falling block will get destroyed.

Thus you can just pressure with raising bar as well as destroy current falling block which only changes short-term plan for opponent thus the gravity and jewel leftover still play one of the challenges. And you have to pay attention to enemy board if important block is coming to crush it too. After all you can use this attack when you want instead of immediately. Oh, and since there is 30 points limit you can't just overwhelm an enemy with single big chain so the matches tend to last a while sometimes, balancing between loss and win. Fun!

The game also includes a fair amount of powerups. Magic Stone blocks return and appear after every 20 lines of jewel removals. Depending on which jewel of Magic Stone hits the floor you get various effect. Just wait at title screen for instructions.

If you do a good amount of chains then you get a block where one of the jewel becomes a Flashing Stone for a limited time. If you manage to remove it then opponent gets a temporal random bad effect. Mostly it's stuff that messes up with humans, such as reverse control. But most important random effect: can't rearrange jewels in blocks. Better than normal attack and will impact CPU as well. It's almost out of place.

And outside of single-player campaign if the board gets filled up with a lot of jewels then game randomly turns one of jewels at the bottom of a screen into Super Flashing Stone. Such situation is somewhat similar to Flash Columns. It will remain there until you remove it after which you get a powerful effect, some until the end of match.

Let's talk of single-player. You get a Pyramid Columns mode, a series of battles with opponents, each battle being “best out of 3 rounds”. Yea, no endless, no flash. If you select Practise then you just battle 3 easy opponents and go back to selection. In Normal mode you battle 10 monsters and there are 5 jewels colors only. The final boss is a surprising difficulty spike, suddenly learning to do constant chains. Sadly, they decided to give Normal players a “screw you” bad ending. Shame. For Hard mode you play with 6 jewel colors and there is extra final boss that eats jewels for breakfast at a lighting speed. And THEN you get your “Congratulations!”.

Oh, it also uses items system. You get random item for beating an opponent, sometimes. You can use them anytime by pausing the game. Hourglass can't be used as it's just a continue. And yea, you have only limited tries otherwise it's game over for you.
Protip: Leave every item for final boss, you silly!

It's just a shame that all opponent are extremely bland. They got nothing to say aside from obvious, 2-frame animations, barely react in any entertaining way. After all the additional ROM chips costed money to manufracture and puzzles always were supposed to be cheap, so they didn't put much graphics. At least multiplayer has various chicken animations that are entertaining. What isn't cheap however is music. The music is so awesome it's almost out of place! It's no wonders that people keep taking tracks from Columns 3 into their Sonic hacks.

As for multiplayer you got a variety of modes for up to 5 players. Sadly there aren't any CPU bots. Gotta find a party of friends who are willing to play some old puzzle game. Got 1-on-1 where you have selection of up to 5 backgrounds and music. 3-for-all has just one background. 2-on-1 in case your mom found the game. And then there are 4-for-all and 5-for-all where positions get shuffled and graphics of jewels become just colored squares . but hey, Clotho remix from the first game, yesss! There are no Flashing Stones in latter modes I believe. Oh, and for every mode you can set up how many jewel colors each players deals with, up to 6, and starting handicap of floor bars. And how many rounds.

Ah, there is test menu. Sound test, control test, color test. Eh.

Overall, it's a solid competitive puzzle. Underrated both as a sequel and as alternative to Puyo Puyo. Great mechanics for attacking and focus is still on same columns gameplay. It's just a shame that it doesn't include solo endless or flash column, you have to get other Columns games for those.

Columns was a simple albeit boring game but this sequel introduced a competitive element to the game. Now you cannot just play casually you have to be pitted against an AI. You use the gems you have collected to push up the floor of your opponent and long chains of matches ends up cursing your opponent. But I felt it didn't really work and it just ended up being annoying. Again I would not bother getting this game.