Columns III: Revenge of Columns was developed by Minato Giken and published by Sega, released for the Genesis in Japan in October 1993 and reaching North America the following March through Vic Tokai, as the third entry in Sega’s Columns falling-block puzzle series. Building on the original Columns and its sequel, the game keeps the core mechanic of dropping vertical sets of three colored gems and matching three or more of the same color, while adding a new “Flash Columns” mode that introduced special jewels capable of clearing entire rows or columns at once, and a versus mode built specifically around competitive head-to-head matches rather than the more score-focused single-player structure of the earlier games. Its faster-paced, more strategic gem-matching and expanded multiplayer options set it apart from the more straightforward original Columns, positioning it as a direct rival to the wave of falling-block puzzle games, including Tetris variants, that dominated the genre in the early 1990s. Though it arrived relatively late in the Genesis’s commercial life and never matched the original Columns’ broad popularity, it remains a well-regarded, more mechanically ambitious entry in Sega’s long-running puzzle franchise.