Final Fantasy VI translator recalls working around Nintendo's overbearing regulations, and dealing with fan backlash

When it comes to Final Fantasy localizations, Ted Woolsey is a man of legend. He was brought in to help make for a more coherent translation on Final Fantasy VI (called Final Fantasy III in the states back then), and his work helped to create a much better localization than previous installments.

The job wasn't an easy one, especially when dealing with Nitnendo's rules and regulations. Nintendo oversaw game releases with an iron fist back then, with an entire bible of things devs/pubs could and couldn't do. For example, Nintendo didn't let publishers put out games that said 'die' or 'death' in the text. This meant Woolsey had to get creative with how he wrote. He explained the situation in an interview with USGamer.

"I wanted to pull as much of the drama in as possible, to try and retain what I could of the more shocking events in the game. I did my best to try and find alternatives and work around some of those blockers."

Many people believe Woolsey's work did even more to enrich the mood, and heighten the atmosphere of the game. That said, there were others who were absolutely against what Woolsey did. Due to the nature of things at the time, Woolsey couldn't talk about the project, and had to just sit back and watch complaints roll in.

"Yeah, there were some very angry people. I understood the passion, and it would have been impossible to explain to everyone what the huge trade offs [with memory capacity] were. We had a platform, the SNES, that came with rules and regulations that were in place and needed to be followed if we wanted to ship. I had to be pragmatic about it all, but of course sometimes was taken aback at how vitriolic some of the attacks were."

This is just a small snippet of the insight Woolsey shares on the localization project. Check out the full feature here.