[Video-Fenky] What happened to all the Square Enix USA folks

Why'd they all move to greener pastures in the first place?
Or is it just a spin-off to the "nobody works at Square for long" syndrome?
 
It didn't go under, but there was a major fucking shakeup. I only heard this secondhand, and I'm not sure how specific I want to get in a public forum, but: Square Enix in Japan did some stuff that caused longtime SE USA president Jun Iwasaki to get royally fed up, and he quit. Out of loyalty, his staff -- the backbone of SE USA, if you read their profiles -- went with him.
 
Ted Woolsey was part of the *old* Squaresoft USA, back when Square supported Nintendo during the NES/SNES days. That whole company got shitcanned when Square decided to support Sony, so he moved on to Crave after that. Then he left Crave and nobody knows what he does now, thankfully it's nothing involved in video games considering that his Shadow Madness was the worst RPG to ever be released in the US and his translation work was shoddy to begin with.
 
The answers to many of the above questions are found in Power-Up: How Japanese Video Games Gave The World An Extra Life, available now at finer booksellers.

EDIT: Actually, Pellham, there are two inaccuracies in that post, which are cleared up on page 228 of Power-Up: How Japane.... alright, alright. Woolsey was asked to move to LA along with the company, but he declined for family reasons. He formed his own developer with some other ex-Square guys called Big Rain, and their first game Shadow Madness was published by Crave.
 
I always though his translations skills were fairly competent espcally given the kind of conservitve environment his was working in, and I new his career path up until the collapse of Craveyard, and then he just sort of vanished off the face of the planet.
 
Pellham said:
Ted Woolsey was part of the *old* Squaresoft USA, back when Square supported Nintendo during the NES/SNES days. That whole company got shitcanned when Square decided to support Sony, so he moved on to Crave after that. Then he left Crave and nobody knows what he does now, thankfully it's nothing involved in video games considering that his Shadow Madness was the worst RPG to ever be released in the US and his translation work was shoddy to begin with.
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The last time I saw him (E3 2002) he was working for Realnetworks. It was very geeky; I saw his name tag at the cafeteria and walked up and called him one of my inspirations.
 
Bwa...? Woolsey's translation skills were, by all appearances, top-notch. The issue was the size of the ROM -- he had to hack the FFIII text down to about a quarter of its original size to get it to fit. When you realize that he translated and rewrote the entire game himself, that's a pretty damned tall order.
 
Interesting as I actually liked Shadow Madness. I'm likely only one of 3 people out there in universe it seems but that will not make me retract it. Besides its obvious knock off attempts at FF at times it had a amateriush feel to it that I couldnt stop rooting for. The mini storys were so well written and the world so bizarre I swear it had to have large female talent or something out of oridinary about the team.
 
Both Secret of Evermore and Parasite Eve i&II were average at best but tending towards the below average side of things for me.
 
Secret of Evermore is underappreciated.

The ending, mostly the last world of Omnitopia was uninspired techno mess and just seemed rush. But everything up to that point, especially the Ancient and Middle Ages segment of the game was amazingly cool.

The market in Nobilia where merchants sold a lot of similar things and it took quite a while or converting currencies and pots and pans to figure out who gave you the best deal was probably one of my earlier introductions into the world of finance, a career which I am now pursuing. It was also quite unique for a game at the time, although the forumlas and who gave the bests deals were quickly given out by Nintendo Power and was posted on-line on one of the earlier FAQ websites.

Lastly, the soundtrack from Jeremy Soule was genuinely haunting, inspired and overall very good. Very un-Square in its lack of orchestral flare, but it was more ambiance. He appared to have 'borrowed' the arrangements of one of the Solitudes Nature CDs in his composition for one of the outdoor areas.
 
Secret of Evermore is mostly memorable for the soundtrack and the fact that the dog became a toaster robot in the last world. The alchemy system was annoying, and the story feeble.
 
soe is a bad SOM clone with bad art. Even borrowing the mechanics of the rather stellar SOM, they managed to make the game unfun and look unpolished.

PE however. That's not half bad. :)
 
Yeah, the alchemy system was a bit wonky. And I never found any of the attack spells all the useful since my dog and my weapons were already powerful enough to deal with most enemies.

I think the spell I used the most was the cure spell.
 
Jonnyboy117 said:
Secret of Evermore is mostly memorable for the soundtrack and the fact that the dog became a toaster robot in the last world. The alchemy system was annoying, and the story feeble.
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I have to agree with this sentiment. At a time when most Square game had impressive stories (well, at least the ones that made it here), Evermore was the first real dud in that department.

Great music though. Who was the composer?
 
Jeremy Soule.

I talked with Woolsey about Evermore, too. Apparently it was the brainchild of JAPAN, believe it or not -- they figured it would be more cost-effective and popular to have Americans create RPGs in America for Americans. This turned out to be entirely wrong. Further details are available in a certain book that shall remain nameless.
 
Kobun Heat said:
Jeremy Soule.

I talked with Woolsey about Evermore, too. Apparently it was the brainchild of JAPAN, believe it or not -- they figured it would be more cost-effective and popular to have Americans create RPGs in America for Americans. This turned out to be entirely wrong. Further details are available in a certain book that shall remain nameless.
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I have the book already, dammit! Don't spoil it! I'm in the Final Fantasy chapter now! I even bought a second one for a friend you mad marketing maven.
 
I think Secret of Evermore got a bad rap is because the translation of Seiken Densetsu 3 (or the game that could have been Secret of Mana 2) for the SNES was cancelled in favor of Square wanting to push Secret of Evermore in America instead. Both games were coming out at about the same timeframe and both games were very similar in concept...so I guess Square made the decision to keep SD3 in Japan and release SoE in the US (obviously that didn't work =P) I remember reading in a video game mag back in the days that Squaresoft USA quietly downplayed SD3 by claiming it had "QA issues" (or something like that) when they were promoting SoE at the time.

I could be totally wrong about it though =P

But to be fair, I have no idea if Seiken Densetsu 3 even lived up to the success (in sales) or acclaim (ie. game ratings) that SD2/SoM had. I remember reading the "details" of the game in an issue of GameFan though...of course with the mag's fanboyish slant towards import games GF made SD3 sound as if it was the greatest thing ever made =P

Edit: some grammar fixes =)
 
what SE USA did should be bloody obvious if you think about it for more than 30 seconds or read the XSEED page.

what has square enix (and EA square, where all these people worked before it) done? they have overseen the localization of square's (and SE's) titles into english and published them in the US. and marketed them (extremely well, for the most part.)

and that's what these people did. and that's what XSEED will do, for someone's games, possibly their own (they seem to be set up as a publisher, but they don't have any titles yet.)

talking about if these people were involved with secret of evermore is like, talking about if the people at SCEA were involved with cliffhanger for the NES. just cos it said sony on the box...
 
I loved SoE. I don't know if such a young age I wasn't expecting Secret of Mana or just enjoyed it for it's gameplay.
 
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