Hanagumi Taisen Columns | Sega Saturn playthrough (JPN) | Real hardware
1Hanagumi Taisen Columns is a puzzle game developed and published by Sega for the Sega Saturn in 1997. The game is a spin-off of the popular Columns franchise and features characters from the Sakura Wars video game series. The objective of the game is to match three or more gems of the same color by swapping them vertically. The game features multiple modes of play, including a story mode and a challenge mode, as well as a two-player mode for head-to-head competition. Hanagumi Taisen Columns is known for its colorful graphics, catchy music, and addictive gameplay, and it remains a popular choice for puzzle game fans on the Sega Saturn.
Review:
This is just a sequel to the Megadrive/Genesis classic, Columns. It has nice cartoony graphics which are functional for the game as well as looking pretty. The way this game plays is to match four coloured blocks. The difference in this update to the original is that you fill up a special meter, and which allows you to pull of your Special move. In my case (I don’t know if it’s character specific) was to take blocks away from my screen. The computer’s special move is different and instead adds blocks to my screen. These blocks can fill up a lot of the screen and cannot be cleared by normal play and you have to wait until a few turns before they disappear. The supers can be ignored when the metre charges up so that it can charge up again to a more powerful level, up to level 3. It seems a bit strange to have different rules to the opponent and I think it would have been much easier if I was able to give the computer un-removable blocks rather than remove my own, since columns can provide a lot of combo bonuses by luck if you just have a stack of random blocks.
So, I’m not sure if this game is better or worse than the original Columns. It makes it more interesting to have the opponent but it’s not fair to have different rules.
It wasn’t too hard though compared to the other puzzle games on the Saturn which seem to rely on pure luck to beat the later stages. I’m giving it an average score, not because it is bad in any way, it’s just that puzzle games like this don’t enthral me and I wouldn’t want to play this again.
Rating 5/10
Original (JPN/NTSC) game played on PAL Sega Saturn with NTSC converter cartridge.
Picture split between CRT TV for my own viewing and OSCC scan converter with 2x line doubler, upscaled to HDMI for recording
No cheats used
Easy difficulty
Deaths cut out
Box art from thumbnail is taken from my own collection
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