#ted woolsey

[raisondetriment]

When you played both Chrono Trigger and Super Mario RPG in the 90s, and then the DS version of Chrono Trigger came out and they re-localized the whole thing so you had no idea of what any special moves, weapons, or items were any more, and now it's been confirmed that the Super Mario RPG remake will also be re-localized and this will even include character names:

[kahran042]

Chrono Trigger oddities

Don’t ever change, Ted Woolsey. :)

What is this orange thingy in the dome graphics in 2300 AD supposed to be?

[chiripepe]

I spent unecessary amounts of time reading over the FFVI wiki and Ted Woolsey did fuck up that translation. Like, he just pulled names and shit out of his ass. Names of espers is just the tip of the iceberg.

Thanks for nothing Ted Woolsey.

Stray = Cait Sith Starlet = Lakshmi (this one actually made perfect sense considering so many summon monsters are already pulled from mythology like Ramuh and Shiva but homeboy went with STARLET) Palidor (wtf) - Quetzalli Shoat - Catoplebas

Weird.

[dj-bayeux-tapestry]

One of the great tragedies of 90s Squaresoft is that Woolsey never got a chance to translate Romancing SaGa 3

[cheshirebuddha]

Shadow Madness: The American JRPG

 Show of hands, how many of you have heard of Shadow Madness? 

 So two of you. 

 As a kid, I remember seeing ads for this game and being rather pumped for it. Somehow. Who could blame me? The year was 1999 and the influx of RPGs on the Playstation had me needing any game in the genre regardless of quality. Looking back, most were really average, but the one I always heard people bitching about was Shadow Madness. I didn’t remember too much about the game itself when I picked it back up few years ago. I shouldn’t have been surprised. 

 Shadow Madness was suppose to be something special, though. It was a RPG created that executive produced and co-written by Ted Woolsey. If that name rings a bell, it’s because he’s the guy who translated a vast majority of Squaresoft’s games into English for the SNES. His name’s notorious in the close knit circle of RPG fans: some love the guy’s translations of the Final Fantasy series, others loathed him for some reason. Personally, I like the guy due to the fact he’s the one responsible for some of the iconic lines that us English speaking folks know and love. The other writer and designer, Paul Reed, was known for writing Secret of Evermore, another American made RPG that Squaresoft. He would later go on to design Metroid Prime years later. The rest of the development staff was comprised of a bunch of newcomers to the industry, and the end result shows a bit of this. 

 The game is more than rough around the edges, but the one thing it definitely succeeded at was the storytelling. Shadow Madness has a intriguing story, one that keeps the player interested throughout the 20-25 hours it takes to wrap up. You begin the game as a man named Stinger. Stupid fucking name no doubt, but I guess it’s not as dumb as Squall or Cloud. Stinger’s hometown is destroyed by a mysterious plague that causes anyone who doesn’t die to turn insane. He sets off across the land, leaving his village in shambles, to find out the reason for the madness that is crippling the countryside. Along the way, he meets up with some other people who are having to deal with the same situation, like a woman with magical powers who goes by the name of Windleaf and a walking, talking farming robot that wields a scythe whose called Harv-5. 

 So why do people hate this game so much? 

 The graphic definitely aren’t up to par to what was coming out at the time (Final Fantasy VIII was released just five months later). Characters on the over world and in towns are a blocky mess, while in battle they range from decent to downright ugly as fuck. CG cutscenes look even worse. The one thing it does get right are the pre-rendered background. Yes, they aren’t as good as something you’d see in a Squaresoft game, but they are certain charm that sets the mood for every location you enter. The character designs, though? They are generic as generic can be, which sucks because they aren’t written to be the run-of-the-mill generic heroes. I’m the furthest thing away from a graphics snob, though, so none of this really bothers me. It gets the job done.   The music, on the other hand, almost rivals the writing. Everything fits the situation perfectly and, like the backgrounds, sets the mood in just the right way. Coupled with the writing and you’ve got two redeeming qualities. The tracks aren’t going to be stuck in your head a few months after playing, but they get the job done efficiently. 

 So far, it doesn’t sound too bad, right? Wrong. Where Shadow Madness fucks up what could possibly be an underrated gem is the poor, poor combat and general game play. It’s not atrocious, just very bad. The one thing it gets right is the ability to skip random battles. While wondering around, you’ll hear a monster’s roar and your Dual Shock will shake. As soon as you hear it, you’ll want to hold all of the shoulder buttons to drop your character into a prone state until the roar is over. If you are lucky, you’ll avoid having to get into combat with monsters. You’ll be doing this a lot, because combat is abysmal. It’s your standard turn based affair with a few twists. Instead of using the face buttons, everything can be controlled with the shoulder buttons. Combat is generic and dull. Stinger and Harv-5 have the ability to do timed hits to make up for lack of magic power. Helpful for boss fights but most random encounters will end before they can begin with the help of your magic-users powerful summon abilities, which are complete with some more terrible CG. There’s nothing here that mixes up the formula in any way.

 It doesn’t help Shadow Madness boasts one of the lowest level caps ever in RPG of it’s size. It’s 15. 15. Games like South Park: The Stick of Truth and most western RPGs are known smaller level caps due to skill trees. Shadow Madness has no reason for this, because there is a definite possibility that you could see that level come in around ten hours into the game, and at that point you still have a while before the journey is over. It should have been bumped up to 25 or 30, without a doubt. I have no idea what the developers were thinking when they made this decision. Completing 45-50% of a RPG and having everyone maxed out should never happen. The low level cap also doesn’t give room for your magic-users to breathe. Every level-up gives them three spells, no matter what. Half of those spells you get by the end of the game are completely useless. They could have increased the level cap to give some breathing room in between spells so there would be a place for them, or cut a majority of them out completely. Or, hell, pass a few down to the characters who do nothing but regular attacks for the entire game. Do something. Fuck. How hard is it to have a leveling system that makes some sort of God damn sense?  I remembered this is my last play through and planned accordingly, trying to avoid every random encounter that I got into and fighting only the battles that I needed to fight. It made the entire experience enjoyable, as well as adding some challenge to the stale combat. I suggest that if you ever think about picking this one up (and who’s kidding, because you aren’t), to play this game as if you are doing a low-level run. 

 So is it the worst RPG ever made?   No, not by any stretch of the imagination. I’ve played some steaming piles of shit in my day, and I’d place this below average but nothing less. If Shadow Madness were a person, it would be a man having to use crutches to get around. The left crutch is the writing, the right crutch is the music. The man himself symbolizes everything else. Those two aspects keep the entire thing from falling on it’s ass in embarrassment. On a whole it’s a forgettable journey that one has no reason to return to after completion unless it’s to explore the world and it’s people, and even then you never would. As it stands, it’s a game lost in the sands of time under a mountain of more memorable and solid titles. The sad part is that it could have been something truly great if given just a little bit more polish.

[mikegon]

Quite possibly the only Shadow Madness web site on the Internet.

I've been toying with the idea of writing a giant thing on the hugely underrated PS3 shooter Haze for a long, long time, and this morning I came to the realization that it comes from the same place that made me obsessed with Richard Kelly's Southland Tales and a million other ambitious failures. It's what made me want to create a Shadow Madness fan site in 2002. The site no longer exists on what is called the "Live Web," only on the Dead Web. You can visit its grave site on archive.org, linked above. I actually updated the site in 2008 or 2009, but the Wayback Machine never caught it before I took the site down.

I'm not going to defend anything written on the site. I probably wrote a couple thousand words total and it's full of mistakes and "cutesy" internet grammar and casual misogyny. That's how old I was. That's just life man, and you have to get over it!

Niche PS1-era titles like Alundra, Galerians, and Destrega are so close to the core of my personality that if I met you and you claimed to have completed any of these games I would immediately trust you enough to let you babysit my 18-month-old daughter. If you make a Legend of Legaia joke in my presence you might just end up in my will.

What I'm trying to say is that I'm always looking for a niche club. I'm always shying away from large groups because I'm afraid of competition. I'd rather feel like a victim, subjugated to live in this hellworld where no one remembers Future Cop LAPD along with a small band of survivors, tasked with the burden of preserving this knowledge for future generations. So, the Haze article casts a shadow over my future like the shadow of Nectar addiction cast over Shane Carpenter.

Until then, here is the only letter I ever received on the subject of Shadow Madness Classic, a fan site inspired by my internet friend Brian Carper, who runs FFClassic, a thriving community revolving around the original Final Fantasy for NES and its endless remakes. The letter came to me during a dark period in 2009. I'd made some decisions that made me question who I was as a person, decisions that I don't regret to this day but will always remember painfully (not unlike the decision Shane must make to abandon his PMC compatriots at Mantel Corp in favor of the technologically inferior but morally righteous resistance fighters). And in the first week of September 2009 I was living right in the deep dark gooey center of all that uncertainty. And then, out of the blue, my Fake Life, a life I'd all-but-abandoned for years, bubbled up to the surface, and everything was okay for like a day. 

Mike, I saw your website and I thought it couldn't be real - nobody would make a website around Shadow Madness.   It is a funny coincidence that I discovered your site.  I was cleaning out my closet this weekend and ran into some old games - one of which was Shadow Madness.  I was going to sell some of these games on ebay and googled SM to see if I could find some used copies, to get an idea of how much I should sell it for.  Your site was about the fifth one down. I was shocked that there existed a place on the internet that was devoted to this game and that your site had been updated within the last ten years.  What really surprised me was that you found this game as intriguing as I did.  I rented it back when it came out, when I was thirteen, and about three years ago bought a used copy while walking through a mom-and-pop game store.  I replayed the game and found that it held up better than I thought.  After finishing it I discovered that the story and the writing really held up, keeping me engrossed til the end and oftentimes making me laugh out loud.  In fact, my old roommate watched me play the whole game and commented that it was one of the best games he'd ever read (laughs). To this day there isn't really a game like Shadow Madness.  The graphics weren't particularly good, though pre-rendered 2D backgrounds help keep the game looking decent after all these years.  What really helps keep the game semi-current is the music (orchestral and dark) and the story (surprisingly deep and well written with excellent dialogue) .  I saw in your 2009 update that you said "you'd be scared to play it again because you fear it hasn't aged well."  Whether the game has or hasn't aged well really depends on you.  Let me say that if you overlook the gameplay and focus purely on the story - pretend the game is more of an interactive novel that requires occasional button mashing - you'll find it enjoyable.  I know that sounds weird, it is a game after all, but the story, writing and music were Shadow Madness's strongest parts since it came out ten years ago.  I feel privileged that there is somebody else who shares my appreciation for Shadow Madness.  We are probably the only two people on the planet who are still talking about this game.  If you're still looking to get into it again, trust me - set the difficulty to easy, blast through the battles and focus on the story, dialogue, music and enviornments.  I am confident you'll get something positive out of it after all these years.  Also - find a FAQ on the internet to help you with those maze parts...beating them quickly helps you get back to the story faster. Thanks for the memories. - Paul

[hiroshimishima]

This is a fascinating article on translators of well known games from Chrono Trigger to Silent Hill. There are two parts, and it's an a neat look at something that a lot of people take for granted.

The genre at the frontline has always been RPGs, an American invention borrowed by the Japanese. Yet Japanese companies were reluctant to release domestically-produced RPGs in the West. As Blaustein recalls of Konami during the early 1990s, "Originally the perception was, 'RPGs will never be popular in America'. Common wisdom was that RPGs were for the Japanese and action games were for the West. I thought all along that was bullshit. The problem was one of translation; the players just weren't getting it, and if they got it they'd love it."

For my part, I grew up with these translations so I really owe/love them for making it possible to play the games in English.. even if it wasn't perfect and had many omissions.  To the point that sometimes, when retranslations come along, they just don't feel right even if they're more accurate.