Ted Woolsey
Ted Woolsey was the primary translator and US producer 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). Woolsey joined the company in 1991.
Woolsey's first project with Squaresoft was the formatting of Final Fantasy IV (released in the US as Final Fantasy II at the time), 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 Mana, Chrono Trigger, and Breath of Fire. In total he worked on and helped launch 9 titles.
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 joined up with another company, called 'Crave Entertainment'. According to GameSpot, Ted Woolsey isn't involved in games anymore." alt.games.final-fantasy FAQ (Part 1 of 3).
And Craveyard died:
"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." Craveyard. Shadow Madness Classic [1].
Real Networks
In 2000 he began working for Real Networks "as Director of Business Development... focusing on Internet distribution of game content..." (IGDA Online Games White Paper, 2002).
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.
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. Errors were commonplace, many of which were of the Engrish variety.
References
- IGDA Online Games White Paper (2002) [2]