Ted Woolsey

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Ted Woolsey is an American game translator and producer who had the primary role in the U.S. production of Squaresoft's role-playing games during the SNES era (circa 1990-1996). Probably the most famous of the games he has translated was Final Fantasy VI (initially released as Final Fantasy III in North America).

After joining the company in 1991, Woolsey's first project with Squaresoft was the translation of Secret of Mana (Known in Japan as Seiken Densetsu 2) and his last project with them, before they moved to Los Angeles, was the translation of Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars. Other titles he worked on included Secret of Evermore, Chrono Trigger and Breath of Fire. In total, he worked on and helped launch 9 titles.

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[edit] Big Rain

Ted Woolsey resurfaced as one of the founders of Big Rain in 1996, with the release of Shadow Madness.

Big Rain changed its name to "Craveyard" at the end of 1997, and merged with another company, "Crave Entertainment".

[edit] The failure of Craveyard

"After the horrible sales failure that WAS Shadow Madness and the ghastly mess that was Project Cairo 64DD-vapourware, Crave pulled the plug on 'Craveyard'". (Shadow Madness Classic)[1].

[edit] RealNetworks

In 2000 he "began working for RealNetworks as Director of Business Development... focusing on Internet distribution of game content..." (IGDA Online Games White Paper, 2002).

[edit] Legacy

Ted Woolsey is perhaps best remembered for introducing console gamers to the process of localization, in the sense that the games he worked on were modified in varying degrees to be more readily understandable to the target culture.[citation needed]

In years prior to his work, most games received translations which were often difficult to understand, due to the fact that the translators usually did not have English as their mother tongue.[citation needed] Errors were commonplace, many of which were of the Engrish variety.

[edit] References

  • IGDA Online Games White Paper (2002) [2]
  • Interview with Player One Podcast [3]
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