Columns
Obsessive Game #5
Type of Game
Tetris for the poor, but only according to Tetris fanatics: people devoid of any capacity for judgement.
Release date on our machines
April 1991, I didn't even know the Game Gear existed yet.
Developer
SEGA Enterprises Ltd. The opposite would have been surprising.
Publisher
SEGA Enterprises Ltd. The opposite would have been mind-blowing.
Columns: not available on any platform whatsoever in its Game Gear or Master System version, even though that's the one with the best fruit textures !
Although I discovered the Columns saga on the Mega Drive at a primary school friend's house named Patrick Crèmerie, it was the Game Gear version that won my heart. I am indeed one of those strange people who owned a Game Gear. Upset to see my big sister Elena Vestibule enjoying her holidays with her Game Boy, I demanded the equivalent from SEGA, and even though I didn't believe it would happen, I got it! I don't even remember how, maybe for my seventh birthday in 1992. So I could satisfy my thirst for video games outside the house, even when Elena wasn't there, for example at the beach or in the mountains. Swimming and skiing could wait a while. Plus, its tiny screen displayed thirty-two colours! Compared to the black and greyish green of the Game Boy, it seemed so much better! Columns was part of the package, and since the console had cost my father an arm and a leg, I didn't get any other games for it for quite some time. At first, I grumbled a bit, thinking I was dealing with a Tetris clone that I already knew inside out.
8-bits gems
Actually, no, after a few minutes I much preferred Columns to Tetris. Maybe I needed to convince myself that I'd got a crazy bargain; maybe I wanted to show off by owning my own legendary cartridge. In any case, the placebo effect worked. Excuse me, can we multiply the length of the holidays by twenty? I'm going to need some time here. From then on, my goals were to finish the game, but also to prove to the whole world that the real timeless killer video game was called Columns and not Tetris. Unsurprisingly, I achieved neither.
Rule of three
I don't think I need to explain the concept of Tetris, do I? It's about shapes falling, basically. That should suffice. In Columns, the pieces all look like... well, columns, basically. Three ‘gems’ stacked on top of each other, each one of which can be a different colour from the five available. If you're tired of precious stones, you can replace them with fruit in the options, or even simple squares, dice and shapes. But they'll still be columns of three, sorry. As the piece descends to the bottom of the screen, you can arrange the colours as you wish. Then the columns stack on top of each other with a rather pleasant little crunch. As soon as at least three stones of the same colour line up vertically, horizontally or diagonally, they disappear, earning you points and making room on the screen.
The gems above fall down one notch, triggering new alignments. The gameplay is different enough from Tetris to avoid any confusion, right? I didn't say it turned it upside down and smashed it on the floor, just that it was different. Let's stay calm. Okay, as a completely biased SEGA fan, I found the concept much more enjoyable! Especially when you start a chain reaction that gives you a score that's too high to even calculate! In reality, when a group of yellow squares vanish, causing the pieces above to fall, making several red triangles disappear, then green diamonds, purple circles and more yellow squares... Too cool! The feeling of reward when facing the challenge buries that of Tetris under several tons of pixels. There, I said it. Do what you want with it, except maybe burn my letterbox, you bunch of haters.
A city, again ?
It's not easy to judge the atmosphere of a game that takes place entirely on a single fixed screen. As with Tetris, the theme has a vague connection to a city. Does anyone know why? I've never understood it. I've never looked into it either, though, which might help me figure it out. But apart from that? Columns and its columns, Greek no doubt. The main menu screen on Mega Drive seems to confirm the Hellenic origin. They could have called it Trees and set it in a forest, it probably wouldn't have changed anyone's life. Mind you, it might already exist, given the staggering number of puzzle games that have been created in the hope of riding the wave of Tetris' success. Yeah, Columns is one of them, I know. Well, at least here we get a nice little picture of a city to make it look pretty. The more difficult it gets, the more the city sinks into the dark night. Stylish, isn't it?
Errrrmmmmff not sure, but it's better than nothing. Plus, it looks like a city in Turkey or North Africa, which is perfect because I'm on holiday. Did I mention that yet? Anyway, here I am, reminiscing about my 1993 winter sports vacation, squatting in a room in a building in Savoie, but it's still closer to Morocco than when I hang out in Le Havre. In the end, who cares about this city! Anyway, the pieces fall so fast at the end that even blinking leads to almost instant defeat. Can we at least finish this game? I don't think so. Even the craziest of players gets beaten up after a while. We play for the score, like we did in the 80s. In Tetris, there's a mode that you can complete and that rewards you with a nice cutscene. Yes, it's better! I admit it! Damn it! Yeah, but in Tetris there's no special shiny magic piece that makes all the gems of the same colour disappear, and you're super happy when it happens! Go away!
Sad like a sapphire (why not)
There were three different tracks in there. Like in Tetris, if I remember correctly. I'll check when I write the text about it, we're not talking about a few months here. It took me a while to realise that if I wanted to listen to the others, I had to specify this in the main menu options. When I finally figured that out, I was so hooked on the default song (subtly called Theme A) that I barely let the others caress my ears. I think I did the right thing, because Theme A had a captivating and melancholic aura that its counterparts didn't have, characteristics that I really appreciated as a kid. I loved daydreaming in a semi-depressed state, even more than having fun and bursting with joy. Carpe Diem and all that stuff, get lost! It's a shame that the title doesn't reveal the little sonic subtleties of the Game Gear that differentiate it from the Master System, and which remind me more of the Atari ST. It would have sounded even better. But in fact, probably not. I still wonder why the developers put sad music on this kind of game, rather than a catchy tune like in Tetris. We cry enough when we lose, no need to add to it! It's just one more mystery, like this story about the city.
Alkalinophile
At the risk of repeating myself, I only played Game Gear during the holidays, or at most on weekends at my grandparents' house, for whom the most advanced technology imaginable was a video recorder and slides. At home or at my friends' houses, I had access to better consoles. This gave my Game Gear a special flavour of carefree fun associated with not having to go to school. It made me forget the hype surrounding Sonic 2 and discouraged me from pestering Elena to ruin her Super Mario Land 2 saves. Seen in this light, you might think I carried it around everywhere, playing a quick game by the pool at the campsite or before a canyoning trip. Actually, no, the Game Gear didn't deserve to be called a portable console, but should have been classified as a battery-guzzling ogre, since it ate six batteries in less than an hour! Yes, even the LR-6 Duracell batteries that awful pink rabbit tried to foist on us! I'm hardly exaggerating.
My parents quickly forbade me from touching the valid batteries in the house. With a monster like that that didn't even fit in my fanny bag, I would steal dozens of them whenever I packed my suitcase. So I had to play the Game Gear with the adapter plugged into a socket all the time, often sitting on the floor. And not outside, of course. How cool were those holidays spent on the beige tiles of my dad's ex's parents' second home! In fact, yes, really cool. I cherished every moment, despite my sore bum. Despite the beige tiles. What could be better than hiding under the duvet to play Game Gear (which had a backlit screen, unlike its competitor krkrkrkrkrkr), with your parents thinking you've been asleep for an hour, only to be humiliated by Columns? Well, not much can beat that kind of memory. Kids today do the same thing with their smartphones; you get it, chumps.
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