The Sega Ages releases by M2 are something special. Release after release, they re-present old Sega classics anew. The level of passion and detail afforded to these releases is noticeable, and absolutely commendable. I might not like every game they are re-presenting, but I sure appreciate their efforts. Lately, I have been playing their latest release on the Switch: Columns II: The Voyage Through Time.
For those of you who aren’t aware, Columns and Columns II are old school Sega arcade puzzlers, some thirty years old actually. The latter of which was only released in arcades until last week. Columns is like Tetris, a vertical puzzle game that requires rapid block placement and rotation, but every piece is a three colored, well, column. Columns are made up of various jewels by default, but will vary to present a bunch of different kinds of shapes and designs, with their colors being critical as you have to try to create rows of matching colored icons (I’ll call them that) in vertical, horizontal, or diagonal fashion, of three or more consecutive pieces. I actually find Columns to be a lot harder than Tetris, and I struggled to get very far at all – I’m talking like stage five or so in Flash Columns. This mode alone has seventy total stages, conquering these would be an immense endeavor to be sure. Even the game’s online manual lets you know that Flash Columns is really hard. The goal in Flash Columns is to eliminate a flashing icon in a pre-existing set of a dozen or so lines. So, right off the bat, your screen is roughly a third or more full already, with the top inching ever closer unless you can eliminate icons by creating those three-or-more links of icons.
To make things exceptionally challenging, skull icons appear randomly, and if you smash one of these, a few more lines get added to your playing area. Keep in mind, this was an arcade game after all, so the goal was to get the player to jump in, enjoy themselves, get hooked, and keep pouring quarters into the machine to continue, so it’s little surprise that the design can be this challenging. M2 recognizes this, and one of the coolest features of this Sega Ages release is being able to disable the skull icons.
The more traditional Vs mode has the player working to eliminate icons and create columns without the pressure of having your back against the wall to start and having to smash a particular piece. This makes the experience more like Tetris. Side note, I liked that the game would give you hints on where might be best to place a column up until you reach stage three; I just thought that was a cool feature to help the player start to recognize patterns and so forth before sending them into the fray. I also liked the Infinite Jewels mode that is forgiving and allows you to just roll on, creating columns. In this mode, there are no stages (no increased speed of falling columns), but sometimes the jewels/icons will rise up and you can also get a sparkling icons that eliminate all icons of the same color.
In this Sega Ages release, you get both Columns games, with online versus support for Columns II and the ability to select your stage. Local play can be done with the Switch turned longways, though I wasn’t able to test online or local play in my time with the game. Leaderboards and avatar unlocks of retro Sega characters is included, and I think that’s great, but whether or not it’s worth the challenge or the hearing the music (some of which hasn’t aged well, but other tracks are still great) is going to vary from person to person. Speaking of music, though, I loved the main menu tune, beautifully done.
Columns’ gameplay is simple, addictive, and largely fun, but it’s also quite a challenge. Despite loss after loss, Columns and Columns II are fun to go back to and try again, just see if I could top my last score. Puzzle games, good ones that is, have a way of being addictive like that. At a point, after a few hours total over the course of a few days, my interest fizzled out, for now at least. But for about $8, and to support future works of M2 and the Sega Ages line, and as a tip of the hat to recognize Columns II finally being released on a home console, I’d still recommend this release for anyone with even a marginal interest.
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