Normally we'd just send out a tweet about this (that's usually what we do with free app deals, so if you're not one of
the almost 40,000 people following us yet, you definitely should be), but this is a good one, and it's a holiday, so we wanted to make sure you knew. Sega is feeling particularly generous this weekend, so they're
giving away free copies of
their Columns Deluxe, a port of
the old Genesis game, for the iPhone. The game is a pretty straightforward port -- it doesn't have any extras, and the accelerometer controls are a little tacked on from what we hear, but if you like the puzzler gameplay of
Columns, and you should, it's a fun one to pull up for a few minutes at a time.
Plus, it's free -- from July 3rd to Monday, July 6th, Sega says it'll be on sale for the low price of nothing at all. Sounds good to us -- sit back, put a few brats and burgers on the grill, grab a Corona (and lime, of course), and enjoy some old-school dropping block gameplay for no money at all.
Tags: columns, download, free, free-stuff, gaming, genesis, holiday, independence-day, iphone, sega
Reader Comments (Page 2 of 2)
crstfr said 11:32PM on 7-03-2009
The problem I have with this article is the twitter plug... and now that I know that you are not including news on the site that you are pushing via twitter, my estimation of TUAW has dropped a notch... or two.
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puhsitch said 2:21AM on 7-04-2009
I dunno...I kind of appreciate that they don't fill up the main site with free iPhone app deals
EH1 said 5:01AM on 7-04-2009
Yup. It's kinda rubbish for a supposedly hot-news site to admit that fellow saddos hooked on the latest stupid fashion for no-life victims get served first, in a desperate effort to be with-it. Man. Says a lot about the ego of the bloggers here.
wbeasley said 8:32AM on 7-04-2009
twitter is for twits...
Time Wasting IdioTS
Like I care what you are currently up to ... in 140 characters. Spare me. Forums and emails are more than enough to keep me up to date without sitting glued to a screen waiting to hear what strangers are doing.
Time to move on to the next 15 minute of famer (but I'm sure the Twitter creators are hoping to get Microsoft to buy them out for a huge price before that happens - probably started the "Apple to Buy Twitter" story just to get MS interested. LOL)
artist-illustrator said 8:39AM on 7-04-2009
a crap game being free for a day or two in the App Store is not news. its a waist of a post. TUAW would be an endless stream of "iPhone app X drops price to" if you had your way
Luke James said 4:32AM on 7-04-2009
wow. that's one of the worst games i've ever attempted to play.
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Lee McCartney said 7:18AM on 7-04-2009
Works in the UK as well! thanks TUAW :o)
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Austin said 7:12AM on 7-04-2009
Sweet.
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artist-illustrator said 8:39AM on 7-04-2009
don't bother. you'll have more fun downloading the game than you will playing it.
worst port of a classic game I've ever seen
in fact, it probably the worst iPhone game I've ever seen
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Jose Betancur said 9:33AM on 7-04-2009
I like Crazy Drops (http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=301231687&mt=8) it is the same concept but the game play is much more fun.
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Flyboybob said 11:38AM on 7-04-2009
The game works fine if you swipe your finger to the Settings screen and turn off the Accelerometer. Then, go to the Help screen to learn how to play the game. You move the falling gems left and right with a swipe of your finger and change to order of the gems by tapping them.
It's just a simple fun amusement when you have time on your hands. The price is right on this one.
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Ryan S. said 2:44PM on 7-04-2009
Exactly! It's actually easier to play that the original game, for me! The accelerometer controls suck. That's true. Turn them off and it's a great game. :)
Yoshi1080 said 1:40PM on 7-04-2009
I bought this game last year when the App Store opened. It's okay, but there are far better puzzle games available like EA's Tetris, Trism and Tatomic. It's worth a look for free, but I wouldn't buy it again. Mainly because of the already mentioned poor porting. That seems to be a pattern for SEGA games by the way.
@Twitter: I don't use it because I don't get the point of it. However, I view all my RSS feeds in the reader application "Times". Is there any way to convert Tweets into an RSS feed? I would like to read the TUAW tweets in Times as well.
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Yoshi1080 said 2:12PM on 7-04-2009
feed://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/678953.rss seems to work for the tweets, although I don't understand much. Tweets always look like a chatlog of a bunch of little girls all chattering at the same time to me.
oboewan said 2:51PM on 7-04-2009
To all who say the controls suck: Turn off the accelerometer and then read the tutorial.
I'm pretty sure that the games weren't actually enhanced with touchscreen control - the emulator is just designed to interpret MBP-style screen swipes (anywhere on the screen) as the D-pad, and touches as buttons depending on what half of the screen you touch.
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