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It was a night like any other night, but for one particular Game Gear cartridge, it was a night he would never forget. Mike Columns was an ordinary handheld puzzle game, driving home from another hard day in the city, when one of the tyres on his station-wagon blew out. Call it luck, call it divine intervention, but somehow, Mike managed to steer the uncontrollable car off the road and down a cliff, turning it into a raging fireball.

Stumbling unharmed from the wreckage, he spotted a tower in the distance and, believing it may have a phone, he headed for the building. It was only when he was metres away that Mike realised - this was no tower, it was a huge atomic bomb. It was a nuclear test site, and Mike Columns was standing at Ground Zero!

The explosion ripped through his puny body like a fork through noodles, yet somehow Mike Columns lived. However, he was no longer an ordinary puzzle game. Bathed in the radioactive energy of a thousand suns, he had become... Super Columns!

Join us now as we follow the thrilling adventures of the Protector of Puzzle Games. Marvel at his incredible shape-dropping abilities. And cheer as he thwarts yet another insidious plot hatched by his arch-nemesis, the Soviet super-scientist Dr. Tetris! For this is no ordinary game! Where once there stood just Columns - a puzzle game in which coloured gems fall down the screen - there now stands Super Columns...!

So what makes Super Columns so different from Columns? Well, not a lot actually. It's still the same old game of joining three like-coloured gems to make them vanish from the screen. Now, however, there are three different ways to enjoy delicious Columns. There's traditional Columns, there's Story Mode, in which guards in a palace challenge you to a game of Columns. Finally, there's Flash Columns, the aim of which is to gain the highly-prized flashing columns, a sort of joker column that makes masses of identically-coloured gems vanish.

I can't really see the point in Super Columns. It has very little over the original version, which was out at the very beginning with the Game Gear and which is now dirt cheap. Last year's Mean Bean Machine was a much more sensible update, with more playability, but the special attacks in the story game are actually quite irritating. I'd go for Mean Bean.

While there's no doubt that Columns has always been an enjoyable puzzle game, it's certainly never been up to the standard of its forerunner, Tetris. Unfortunately, Super Columns has very little to offer over the basic game.

The Story Mode (cruddy story bits aside) is probably the most inventive addition with a variety of special attacks that you can use on your opponents.

Even this though, just comes across as a weaker version of Mean Bean Machine. This isn't to say that Super Columns is bad, it's just that Mean Bean Machine is a far superior puzzle game and, really, there's very little reason to buy both.

Graphics 74%
Very simple looking, but that makes it very clear to see what's going on. Which is good.

Sound 62%
Little bleeps and chimes and some annoying alien mind ray music. Not easy listening.

Playability 74%
That Columns playability still runs true. Although rotating some columns is a fiddle.

Lastability 75%
If you like Columns then you could play it forever. If not, there's little variety bar the story.

Value For Money 74%
Sega's new cheaper pricing makes it quite tempting.

Overall 74%
It's just Columns... again. A good puzzle game, but Mean Bean Machine is better.