Columns III: (Taiketsu! Columns World) is an arcade puzzle game developed by Sega and published by Sega in Japan in 1993 and by Vic Tokai in North America in 1994 as a sequel to Columns II: The Voyage Through Time. It never saw an official PAL release back in the day so PAL regions had to miss out. Sega must have viewed the game poorly upon original release as they only published it in Japan, Vic Tokai then stepped up and decided to publish it in North America and PAL regions were left without a publisher.

Until now, for PAL regions trying to play this game as an import from Japan and USA sees two major hindrances, one: is that the Japanese version is region-free but has Japanese heavy text making the player not be able to understand what is going on and two: the USA version is in full English text but is heavily region locked causing the player to need a Game Genie code to crack the region lockout or use a Mega key adapter.

This patch here makes the game fully playable in all regions with no region lockout of any kind. It can be played on a USA NTSC Genesis, a Japanese NTSC Mega Drive and for the first time, a PAL European Mega Drive. A real (World) version of this game.

NOTES:

1. I used the North American ROM to make this patch, so if playing this on a 60Hz Genesis or on the USA setting of an emulator, it will behave and play exactly the same as the North American version.

2. ROM will play on a PAL system but it has slow music, surprisingly the tracks are on a very short loop so hearing them slower shouldn’t be as annoying as hearing them in NTSC on a short loop.

3. The music has a habit of speeding up and slowing down it’s tempo during game play depending on how much room has filled up in your play area so after a while the slower music thing in PAL becomes redundant to notice as the tempo keeps changing due to game play.

4. Inside the ZIP file you’ll find the IPS patch, it is in Lunar IPS format and simply needs to be patched to the USA ROM of Columns III. Don’t use the Japanese ROM.

5. I made this patch because not enough people care for PAL regions and nearly always make ROM patches specifically for the USA region which I find very frustrating at times. The good part is that this is a (World) ROM and not specifically a PAL ROM only so the USA region is still supported here along with Japan in English.