Trivia / Madou Monogatari

• Author's Saving Throw: Madou Monogatari 4. Published by Sting, it's the first title in two decades where Compile Heart, successors of Compile, D4 Enterprise, the current IP holders and Sega all are collaborating on the same project, with no licensing issues at all.
• Exiled from Continuity:
  • Sorcery Saga: Curse of the Great Curry God does away with the original Madou Monogatari characters since they would become owned by Sega following their purchase of Puyo Puyo. At least a few of the new characters are Expies of the old cast. Madou Monogatari 4 would bring back the original cast thanks to Compile Heart and D4 striking a deal with Sega, allowing them their usage.
  • Conversely, since Sega does not own the Madou Monogatari games, none of the characters or music featured in them can appear in a Puyo Puyo game, unless they were already featured before Sega bought the Puyo Puyo IP. However, none of them appear in Sorcery Saga either. Make of that as you will...
• Fan Translation:
  • The Game Gear versions of Madou Monogatari I, II, III, and A, as well as the Mega Drive and PC Engine versions of Madou Monogatari I and Hanamaru Dai Youchienji for the Super Famicom. With the exception of the Game Gear Madou Monogatari I and Hanamaru Dai Youchienji, these games translate the series title to Sorcery Saga to maintain consistency with the only officially-localized Madou Monogatari game.
  • Secret Of Elysium has a Japanese fan translation released in 2020, as it was originally in Korean.
• Flip-Flop of God: The canonicity of Shin Madou Monogatari, in particular the Madou Monogatari Chronology that attempts to Canon Weld Madou Monogatari and Puyo Puyo (viewable here), is in an odd place. The original plan for Saturn Madou, per its producer, was to create a new unified universe. However, several rewrites and the financial turbulence of early 1998 resulted in a drastically smaller-scale story. Scenario writer Kenji Oda took his unused story ideas and used them to create Shin Madou Monogatari and its Chronology, billed as the "true" Madou Monogatari universe. Despite this, Oda's comments in the first and eighth volumes suggest that he only considers Shin Madou to be "his" timeline^note His comments were like this: "This is a story that I draw only in my head.", "It's a story that doesn't exist in Compile.", "I couldn't accept that the story I created was dropped by Compile, so I published it as a novel." , and other factors^note the only game that unambiguously takes from the Shin Madou Monogatari timeline is Puyo Puyo Gaiden: Puyo Wars (which Oda had a hand in), two other games that would've referenced the Chronology had those plotlines dropped in development (see What Could Have Been and Word of Dante below), and at least part of Shin Madou was written after Oda had left Compile further make the novels' claim dubious. Sega is content with not touching any of it beyond token references that could easily be interpreted as Discontinuity Nods.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: D4 Enterprise has worked with Sega multiple times regarding the copyright situation, the result being multiple collections for PC that include many Madou Monogatari and Disc Station games. The only titles whose ownership statuses are still questionable are Madou Monogatari: I Honoo No Sotsuenji (developed and published by NEC), and Arle no Bouken: Mahou no Jewel (which is not part of Madou Monogatari but is not explicitly a Puyo Puyo game either). That being said, Madou Monogatari on the Sega Saturn is still the only "major" installment that hasn't gotten a re-release yet for unknown reasons.
• No Export for You: Unfortunately as of writing, NONE of the Madou games have ever been localized for English audiences. The closest thing, however, was the Spiritual Successor Sorcery Saga: The Curse of the Great Curry God for Steam and Play Station Vita.
  • Secret of Elysium was made by the short-lived Korean branch of Compile, and was never released to Japan.
• Prop Recycling: The voice samples in the first Puyo Puyo game were taken from Madou Monogatari 1-2-3. This is the most likely reason why Rulue lacks a vocal catchphrase.
• Screwed by the Lawyers: Sorcery Saga: Curse of the Great Curry God, as detailed in Exiled from Continuity above.
• Sequel First:
  • Madou Monogatari 2 was actually the first game in either series to be released anywhere. A beta version was included in the Christmas '89 edition of Discstation.
  • The Western world didn't receive a Madou Monogatari game until 2013, and, by that time, Arle and the rest of the cast have long since moved on from the Madou name.
• Sequel Gap: The gap between Madou Monogatari for the Sega Saturn (1998) and the i-Mode Madou Monogatari (2005) is 7 years, and the time between that game and Sorcery Saga (2013) is 8 years, with a further eleven years before Madou Monogatari 4 (2024), and around twenty years since a new game starring Arle.
• Swan Song: The Mega Drive remake of Madou Monogatari I was the final official game on the system in Japan; this is almost certainly the reason why it was included in the Japanese version of the Mega Drive Mini.
• What Could Have Been:
  • The Madou Monogatari Chronology, contained within the first volume of Shin Madou Monogatari and the Madou Monogatari Fan Book, is essentially a massive collection of unused Canon Welding ideas for the Madou Monogatari and Puyo Puyo series. The Chronology contains five unused story concepts for the Saturn Madou Monogatari written by former Compile employee Kenji Oda; All of them are considered canon to the Chronology:
    • The first story candidate would have involved more Jewel Guardians, akin to those from Madou Monogatari: The Final Test.
    • The second story candidate would have seen Arle's kindergarten teacher calling her to defeat some monsters, and would have ended with a rematch with Fudoushi.
    • The third story candidate would have involved a treasure hunt at a magic school's vacation spot.
    • The fourth story candidate, "Catastrophers", is significantly more detailed than the previous potential plotlines. After a series of prologues in which Arle battles Fudoushi yet again, Rulue battles her mentors, and Ragnus battles Rune Lord in the past, focus shifts to the battle between Arle's friends and a doomsday cult named the Catastropher Seven. Rulue's father Edge and Schezo's trans-female friend Sword would also be involved.
    • The fifth story candidate is Shin Madou Monogatari itself.
    • As detailed on Puyo Puyo's What Could Have Been page, there were ideas to tie Arle no Bouken: Mahou no Jewel and Pocket Puyo Puyo~n into the Chronology, with a slot actually being reserved on the published timeline for Arle no Bouken.
  • The Saturn Madou Monogatari underwent a lot of changes from the pre-release promotional video.
    • There was originally going to be a traversable overworld with eight-directional movement. This was relegated to the Ragnus-centric prologue, leaving the overworld as a point-and-click area select and depicting everywhere else in isometric perspective.
    • There were going to be actual cutscenes, but those never made the final cut.
    • The Grand Sealing Tower (or at least some tower segment) was going to be accessible to Arle, complete with puzzles such as matching Puyo to unlock a door. The tower only appears in the prologue in a heavily truncated form, containing only boss encounters.
    • Ragnus was going to be playable in his younger form, when in the final game, he's only playable in his older form.
  • Kazunari Yonemitsu apparently had ideas for up to nine episodes of Madou Monogatari, with a "River of Time" being a plot element in the planned Episode 6.
  • There were plans for a Madou Monogatari 0 which would have covered Arle's birth. Specifically, Arle would have traversed her mother's womb and fought off disease-like enemies attempting to botch Arle's birth.
• Working Title: Prior to being picked up for localization, Sei Madou Monogatari was shown off under the English title of "Holy Sorcery Story".