Famitsu just shared an interview with Compile Heart on their recent internal restructure and broader shift in focus when it comes to software output (in a nutshell, they're prioritising global, multi-platform releases for every game and, without going mass-market, attempting to take on new genres) and the new leads chose to reveal several upcoming games, all of which are due by summer of next year, with one being particularly noteworthy: a new Madou Monogatari title, with the working title of "Madou Monogatari 4".
For the unaware, Madou Monogatari was a first-person dungeon-crawler RPG series, originally developed and published by Compile, from which the world and characters of Puyo Puyo were derived, and while it's fared a lot better than some of the game in Compile's catalogue post-bankruptcy, the rights to the series have been complicated enough that doing anything with the IP has never been easy: put simply, D4 Enterprise owns the IP and the original software but none of the characters, so they can't actually do anything with those original games without Sega's sign-off (and they don't always get it when they ask for it, either), nor can Sega do anything explicitly RPG-like with the Puyo Puyo characters for fear of infringing too closely on Madou Monogatari.
(Compile Heart's connections to OG Compile are fairly tenuous: they were indeed formed by select former Compile staff and were granted extremely generous permission from D4E to go forward with new games based on old Compile IP, but you wouldn't know it from most of their output.)
D4E and Compile Heart did roll the dice on a brand-new Madou Monogatari back in 2013: titled Sei Madou Monogatari, it completely bombed due to a) being a Shiren the Wanderer clone rather than a first-person dungeon crawler, b) being full of characters that were not only wink-nudge references to classic Compile characters but whose conversations were often just meta references to older games and/or copyright issues, at the expense of originality of a halfway-serious plot, and c) Compile Heart farmed it out to the notoriously shoddy Zerodiv, so yeah, it sucked ass. This game got a global release, even, as Sorcery Saga: Curse of the Curry God, and I can't check right now but I presume it's still available on Steam (it's geolocked, IIRC).
In recent years, there have been signs of cooperation between D4E and Sega—Sega letting some of the Game Gear Madou games show up on a Dwango vintage game app, Madou Monogatari 1 appearing on the Mega Drive Mini, etc—culminating in D4E's recent limited-edition physical Madou Monogatari compilation for PC, which included emulated versions of over 40 Madou-related games across both Japanese computers and consoles and even includes certain versions of Puyo Puyo games. (They recently opened orders for a second and final run, if anyone wants in; it'll ship in December.)
Now, they've taken things even further: Sega's given permission to D4E and Compile Heart to use classic Compile-era characters in this new Madou game, and they're very clear about it being a direct sequel to the classic games, too. They haven't outlined precisely how much of the old lore/stable they have access to—their teaser art is images of the Puyo, Carbuncle, Suketoudara and Skeleton T—but even if they're being limited to tertiary/zako characters, they'll at least have the foundation to produce something halfway-credible, provided they resist their urge to make it one big in-joke. The actual dev on the game is Sting, and they're emphasising the fact that a lot of former Compile folk went to Sting back in the day and will be working on this game, but I do wonder precisely how true that is.
I don't think I've ever played a Compile Heart game I liked, but between this and some of the other announcements made in this interview—a new hardcore STG by M2, a Touhou tactics-RPG with real-time elements by Sting (Knights in the Nightmare-ish, maybe?)—have piqued my interest, so I hope they're able to achieve their goal of diversifying, and that they specifically diversify away from low-hanging trash. As for Madou in particular, I'm more curious about what this new game might do for official global reissues of the classic games than a new one, but who knows, maybe the new game will be interesting in its own right... Sting used to make great games, after all.
further evidence of D4E & Sega's renewed chumminess: Madou Monogatari 1-2-3 (MSX2) and Puyo Puyo (PC-9801) are coming to Project EGG (the JP subscription service for, not the recent console line) next week! D4E's previous Madou reissues have all been boutique box sets with tiny print runs, so this is the first time they've been able to just put 'em out for general digital purchase:
these are out today, so please enjoy this commemorative screenshot of PC98 Puyo Puyo's Drunk Arle
