Columns Crown [GBA]

Columns originally debuted in the early 90s as a response to Nintendo's acquisition of the Tetris license...since Nintendo systems were the only ones to get a version of the extremely popular (and excellent) series, Sega created its own version of the falling item puzzle genre for the company's Genesis console and Game Gear portable in the form of Columns. The game's design wasn't a system seller like Tetris, but it wasn't bad...and thanks to the recent Sega/THQ alliance, the game's been revived for play on the Game Boy Advance in a more elaborate production than what was played on Sega systems a decade ago. But does that make it a gem in the GBA library? Not completely...

Features

• Three different gameplay modes
• Brand new attacks
• Link cable support for two players (single and multicartridge)
• Battery save
• Only for Game Boy Advance

Columns Crown is a Tetris-esque puzzle game where the challenge is to line up three or more gems of the same color in a bin by dropping and arranging vertical stacks of three colored gems. When those gems match, they disappear...and the stack shifts down into the bin, potentially forming more links for very handy combinations. When the bin fills up to the top, the game's over. For the Game Boy Advance design, WOW Entertainment wrapped a really stupid, cutesy storyline around the whole Columns design: the gems of the kingdom's crown has been stolen, and it's up to you to get them back by playing games of Columns...either by yourself in Survival Mode and Flash Columns, or against computer AI opponents in the Vs. modes. By successfully accomplishing set tasks, you'll earn the lost gems, one by one.

Though the game plays as closely to the Genesis and Game Gear editions released ten or so years ago, the GBA developers included a few elements to the design, including power-ups in Vs. modes. Each gem collected for the crown also has a specific offensive or defensive ability when playing against an opponent. As you complete chains of combinations during play, your power gauge will rise...fill it all the way and a power-up gem will fall with the rest of the gems in play. If you manage to form a link of three with the power-up color, it'll activate the attack...and some of the attacks in Columns Crown are downright nasty. "Quake" will violently shake your opponents' play screen for a few seconds...and "Freeze" will lock the opponent's falling gems in place, preventing him from being able to cycle through them as they fall. There are 25 different attacks in all...and you can only gain access to, at most, five of them during play, since you have to choose which ones you'd like to use before the game begins.

Columns Crown's overall design is very simplistic...almost too simplistic for its own good. Because you're forced to deal with the falling pieces as a column of three gems, there's no real feeling of freedom like in Puyo Pop...it feels like you're locked down and forced to play a very limiting design. And while Columns was one of the first Tetris-esque games to work combinations in its design, most people will find that it's more a matter of luck than skill arranging gems in such a way that'll make the stack topple like a house of cards. Admittedly, the game picks up a notch in the Vs. mode, because the offensive and defensive attacks are pretty darn cool and full of variety.

And chalk another Sega game using the GBA's link feature to good use...you'll be able to play two player with single or two cartridges, and you can even trade earned gems back and forth between two copies of the game. Strange, though, that this game only has two player support when Puyo Pop, a much better design of the same genre, offers four player challenges...

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