I was kinda hoping after Puyo Puyo™ Tetris® that Sega may consider other spin-off crossovers with puzzle games, and I had hope Columns would be it.
But honestly, I dunno if I could trust Sega with putting a story to Columns. Don't get me wrong I would love their to be a Columns IV or a Columns reboot, especially if given characters and story just like modern Puyo Puyo games... but it depends what they will have in mind for such story and characters.
The little-known "backstory" of Columns is that is regarded as a Phoenician game played by merchants.
Phoenicia being a civilisation during Ancient Greek times, they were known for their navy, their charismatic merchants and for establishing a sort of "empire" through good trade business over military. This is why Columns I was sort of Greco-Roman in theme and Columns III be Egyptian because Greece, Rome and Egypt were all part of Phoenicia's empire of trade routes across the Mediterranean sea.
To simply put, I don't want Sega to give up Columns Phoenician/Greco-Roman theme in favour of knocking off Puyo Puyo characters and themes (which they attempted to do so for such games as Columns Crown and Columns Jewel tried to do the very same with colourful fantasy forest-lands and ditzy marketable modern teen girl etc.)
Heck, I never even heard of Phoenicia until Columns introduced me to it! I've heard of the Punics from the Punic Wars but I did not know they were descendants of the Phoenicians.
I know when it comes to the "theme" of Tetris there's not much to it given it's about stacking blocks so Sega took liberties to apply a "theme" to it that will fit with Puyo-lore. Thus introducing it as a game from "Planet Tetris" and that it's introduce from the crew of the SS Tetra.
But way I see it it while Tetris is an international game it is still somewhat cultural to Soviet Russia due to it being promoted as "The Soviet Challenge" and sometimes depicted with the Space Race or the Saint Basil's Cathedral. While this was done more for promotional reasons than cultural I still regard Tetris for it's Russian roots.
Just saying if I scripted PPT, I would keep it mostly the same as it is now, the only difference being the star ship SS Tetra be made in Russia, a country located on Ringo's world (Puyo Puyo 7 proves places like UK, Egypt, Easter Island exist on Ringo's world so perhaps other countries exist there as well). It would fit in with the "Space Race" theme of a group of Russians wishing to pioneer Space.
My concern is if Sega ever decided to reboot and give Columns a story, whenever independent or crossover with Puyo Puyo, I just don't want Sega to throw out the Phoenician angle and have some "Planet Columns" where everyone simply look like all the other colourful characters but with gemstones instead of puyo accessories. Things like that.
If Puyo Puyo™ Tetris® is a story about visitors from space, why not Puyo Puyo™ Columns be about visitors from another time? (Which would make sense given "Columns II: The Voyage Through Time" had something to do with time travel.) I just don't want them to give up COlumns ancient antiquity theme.
