
Almost 35 years after it was originally made, the first-ever version of the popular match-three puzzle game Columns has finally been found and documented online.
Most people will probably know of Columns from Sega's versions of the game — which have since been reissued across various compilations and mini consoles — but the title actually has an interesting history that predates those releases.
It was originally designed by Jay Geersten for the HP-UX operating system while working at Hewlett Packard in 1989, who later gave his source code to various other developers to produce additional versions for MS-DOS, Atari ST, Macintosh, and Windows 3.x.
In the past, Geersten's original HP-UX version of the game was considered to be lost media, but yesterday, the video game collector @TrevgauntletNeu announced that they had found the original title and had managed to get it working in MAME. They've since shared some screenshots online as well as a 6-minute video of it in action, giving us our first-ever glimpse at the game's true origins.
As expected, given the change in platform, it looks remarkably different from the versions that were eventually released by Sega, using uniform blocks similar to Tetris rather than the colourful gems seen in later games. There are also no references to ancient mythology — something that would later become associated with the series through various marketing materials and in-game artwork.
[source twitter.com]
Comments 8
Wonder if this can be made to run on other versions of NIx.
This is so much more appealing to me than any other version of columns. Game gear is my favorite Sega released one, but their one insistence on trying to make the series seem fancy looking is really strange. Actually both game gear ones are at the top of my list, iirc, the first one is simple with quite a bit of customization and the second one had a different matching system which made it less like columns but definitely a worthy experience.
I loved the Sega version so much. I would bounce between this and Super Puzzle Fighter all the time. Wonder if there are any licensing issue that might keep this from making the rounds on various platforms.
It's a shame they don't disclose where or how they found this.
@Daggot Columns 2 got it's first official English release on switch not that long ago iirc. Sega just owns the series outright, but it's not in much demand probably. It never really had much of an identity, despite being endlessly imitated and I believe (again iirc) originating the term match 3.
@Poodlestargenerica they were simply trying to make it look better than Tetris which was selling loads.
@Lorfarius And yet the best versions of the game are the simplest looking ones, and none of them are better than tetris, so it wasn't really a good goal to invest time and money making the gems look cool.
@Poodlestargenerica all about the marketing execs, so long as it was bigger, better and prettier than their competition to stand out in stores/media.
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