Hyperdimension Neptunia makers announce dungeon RPG with retro-game roots

This week's issue of Japan's Famitsu magazine marks the debut of Sei Madou Monogatari, a new dungeon role-playing game that's a bit of a nostalgia trip for long-in-the-tooth gamers in the East.

The original Madou Monogatari, released for Japanese computers in 1989, was a 3D dungeon crawler from Compile, the company behind many classic-era shooting games. The series lasted all through the 1990s, getting releases on the Sega Saturn and iOS, and its main characters were borrowed for the Puyo Puyo series of puzzle games, which achieved quite a bit more popularity worldwide.

The new Sei Madou Monogatari (which means something like "Holy Wizardry Story") is a PS Vita title that drops the 3D dungeon-RPG viewpoint for more of a tilted overhead perspective. The title has also shifted genres slightly, as it's now a Mystery Dungeon-esque crawler with randomly-generated dungeons.

It's being developed by Compile Heart (the makers of Record of Agarest War and Hyperdimension Neptunia) and is due out in Japan next March.