Columns

Columns
Developer	Jay Geertsen, Sega
Publisher	Sega Hewlett Packard (HP-UX) Kobian (PlayPal)
Systems	Arcade, Astro City Mini, Atari ST, DOS, Game Gear, Game Gear Micro, Genesis, HP-UX, Linux, Mac OS, macOS, PlayPal, Master System, MSX, PC Engine, PlayStation 4, Switch, Windows, X68000, Xbox One
Released	Atari ST, DOS, HP-UX, Mac OS NA: 1989 Arcade WW: 1990 Sega Genesis/Mega Drive NA: June 29, 1990 JP: June 30, 1990 EU: July 9, 1990 Game Gear JP: October 6, 1990 EU: April 26, 1991 NA: April 26, 1991 MSX2 JP: December 25, 1990 PC Engine JP: March 29, 1991 X68000 JP: October 16, 1991 PlayPal (Game Gear) EU/NA: 2006 Windows (Genesis Classics) WW: September 13, 2010 Linux, macOS, PS4, XOne (Genesis Classics) WW: May 29, 2018 Nintendo Switch (Genesis Classics) EU: December 6, 2018 NA: December 7, 2018 Nintendo Switch JP: August 8, 2019 WW: October 17, 2019 Game Gear Micro (Game Gear) JP: October 6, 2020 Astro City Mini JP: December 17, 2020 NA: March 26, 2021 EU: June 22, 2021
Added to museum	Windows: March 11, 2016 Linux macOS: December 21, 2018 PlayPal: October 31, 2020 Game Gear Micro: March 26, 2021 Switch (Sega Ages): April 14, 2021 Astro City Mini: September 14, 2021

Columns is a puzzle video game that was created by Jay Geertsen and was sold to Sega in 1989.

Development

Jay Geertsen developed Columns, in 1989, while working at Hewlett Packard. He was working on a tutorial for X11 as his task was to port a graphic application to that windowing system. He felt that working on a game would be more of a fun way to learn X11 than working on a tutorial.

The game was uploaded to the Hewlett Packard server, and was ported to Atari ST, DOS, and Mac OS.

One of Sega's lawyers contacted Jay Geertsen to buy the rights and he consulted the management at Hewlett Packard as HP resources had been used to create the game. In late 1989, Hewlett Packard sold the rights to the game to Sega and donated the money to the Mile High United Way. Sega had exclusive rights to create future ports of the game, however, Hewlett Packard retained the rights to package the original X11 version with their HP-UX Unix implementation.