Columns (video game)

Columns (Japanese: コラムス, Hepburn: Koramusu) is a match-three puzzle video game released by Jay Geertsen in 1989.

Columns was one of the many tile-matching puzzle games to appear after the great success of Tetris in the late 1980s.

While a column is falling, the player can move it left and right, and can also cycle the positions of the symbols within it.

Lastly, the Game Gear version had a feature that let the player change the jewels to fruit, squares, dice, or playing card suits (clubs, diamonds, spades, and hearts).

The same year on December 4, title was released on Nintendo's Virtual Console for 800 Wii Points.

It was also included as one of the games in the 2018 releases of Sega Genesis Classics for Windows, Linux, macOS, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch.

[15] The game was re-released on the Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack in December 2022.

In Japan, Game Machine listed Columns on their April 15, 1990 issue as being the eighth most-successful table arcade unit of the month.

[26] It went on to be Japan's fourth highest-grossing arcade game of 1990 (below Capcom's Final Fight and Sega's Tetris and Super Monaco GP)[27] and third highest-grossing arcade conversion kit of 1991 (below Capcom's Street Fighter II and Sega's Tetris).