Gameplay
There are three modes in the game: Arcade, Original Game and Flash Columns. In Arcade Mode the objective is easy, you play on a grid with rows of columns falling down ( each having 3 jewels ). You must guide the columns and try to pair up 3 or more jewels of the same color, either vertically, horizontally, diagonally and/or a mix of those three to make the jewels disappear. But unlike Tetris, you can't change the position of the columns, but you can shuffle the cycle of the jewels. There are also Magic Jewels that pop up once in awhile, if you let these jewels touch a certain colored jewel, like for example ''blue'', not only will that jewel disappear but all the other blue jewels will disappear too, sometimes resulting in a chain reaction of other jewels. I also like to point out that even though the game and instruction manual says that the magic jewels only appear in the medium and hard levels, I've seen them appear many times during the easy level. Now the one grip I have about the arcade mode is, even though you may be playing by yourself, there are still two grids on screen, player one grid on the left and player two grid on the right. So when you play by yourself you have to stare at the left said of the screen the whole time, this might sound a bit picky but it can get rather annoying at times.
Original Game has the same objectives as Arcade, minus the Magic Jewels. And I highly recommend playing this mode over Arcade for one reason, the grid is in the center for one player!! There is an option menu that pops up before the game the lets you modify things like the Class ( novice, amateur and pro ), Level ( the higher the level the faster the columns drop ), Time Trial and BGM ( 3 selections ). Now if you have Time Trial on ''yes'' then you have to try and get as many jewels within 3 minutes, if it's off then you can play it like the arcade mode, good for solo plays if the side thing in arcade mode annoys you. In Flash Columns, the objective is to get through rows of jewels and try to reach the flashing jewel at the bottom of the grid and make it disappear with matching colors of 3 or more. Doesn't sound like much but you can change how high you want the row of jewels to be for a better challenge. You can also play against another player and see who can get the flashing jewel first.
Graphics
For an old genesis game the graphics look nice and look closely like the arcade game ( well there's not much graphics to begin with ). There are a variety of jewels making for a colorful field and the background is the same in all modes, except for a color change in Original and Flash Columns. There are also two title screens in the game ( if you haven't noticed ) that look nice, but that's about it.
Sound/Music
The music in the game is okay, nothing great but nothing bad either, except for the arcade mode's theme which sounds really bad and kinda ''down''. Luckily you can change to the other 2 BGM in Original and Flash which sound way better. Nothing special about the sound, just odd sounding. Like when you're columns land they sound like one of those big doors closing ( sorry, probably not the best example ).
Replay Value
There isn't much to do in the arcade mode but make blocks disappear until you lose, at least Tetris made it addicting and interesting. You'll probably be playing Original and Flash more often anyway. There isn't really much here that's THAT original, and there are other ''Tetris clones'' that do a better job at variety then this.
In Closing
It's an average puzzle game that'll keep you playing for a couple of hours, but once you find out there isn't much to Columns, then I doubt you'll be coming back to it often.
Overall Rating: 5/10