Magic Jewelry is an unlicensed game based off Columns, made in 1990 by Hwang Shinwei and published by RCM.
Overview
Magic Jewelry's Gameplay.
This game is a basic rip off of Columns, where you have to get rows of three of the same colored jewelry to clear them and get points. At the end of each level, a column of X blocks appear and whatever color jewelry it touches, all of them that color disappear. These also appear when you lose a game. However, it is set in New York as opposed to Egypt, with the Statue of Liberty taking up a considerable amount of the background graphics. As well as this, the stars and the moon constantly move up the screen for some strange reason, reappearing at the bottom. The background changes color between levels and the columns move gradually faster, however much less rapidly so than in Columns. The music changes as well. Like that game, pausing won't make the blocks disappear unlike most puzzle games, making it easier to anticipate the next couple of moves.
Music
These are the songs that ripping off by the copyrighted third party songs.
| Level | Name | Description |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | All Kinds Of Everything | |
| 2 | Happy Chinese Festival | |
| 3 | Descendants of the Dragon | |
| 4 | Rise from your Grave | |
| 5 | Jägerchor | |
| 6 | Moonlight on the Colorado | |
| 7 | Greensleeves | |
| 8 | Speak Softly Love | |
| 9 | Tennessee Waltz |
Magic Jewelry II
Magic Jewelry II's title screen.
In 1991, Hwang Shinwei decided to follow up this game with Magic Jewelry II, which adds a menu screen allowing the player to start on any of the first 9 stages, make it so that certain colors of jewelry don't give you points, start a 2 player mode which has an optional time limit (the option is called "Flash" for unknown reasons,) and turn the music off. There are more music tracks than the original, and there is an indecipherable voice when you start a game. The title screen for this game is ripped from one of Columns' title screens. As well as this, some of the menu graphics are taken from Hatris and the ones in the 2 player mode bear a resemblance to those from Columns.
Hacks
Because this game is somewhat common on multicarts, there are numerous hacks of the Magic Jewelry. One hack is called Abacus, which is a simple rom hack which changes the graphics and slightly alters the music. Another, Coin Tetris (also called Coin Building Block) makes similar changes.
Another one of these is by JungleTac, which is called Jewel Master. Oddly, while most versions of this use standard JungleTac music, one version on the dreamGEAR 25-in-1 uses Shenzhen Nanjing music. JungleTac also made a sequel for their 16-bit hardware called Jewel Master II, which adds the ability to rotate pieces.
There is yet another version included on a 190-in-1 Multicart. The title screen was replaced with a menu similar to the one from Magic Jewelry II, the background was changed to resemble Moscow as opposed to New York and there's only one song that plays throughout the game. Like Magic Jewelry II, the graphics for the pieces can be changed although oddly, this is done by choosing one of the repeats on the multicart menu. It is unknown whether Shinwei developed this hack or not.
Gallery
Trivia
- The background was stolen from the intro of the NES game Golgo 13: Top Secret Episode. It was recolored, and clouds, stars, and a crescent moon were added above the Statue of Liberty.
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