I actually liked the dubs by Working Designs, though I'm probably in the minority for that. Otherwise, they were almost all lackluster. I did like the choice of narrator for Dragon Slayer: Legend of Heroes, and work done for Ys I & II was surprisingly okay. The voices in Last Alert are HORRIBLE, but nostalgia gives that one some charm. I'll never get over the "OH! OH!" instead of "Uh oh!" in Final zone II, though.
I don't understand why voice acting wasn't taken more seriously in most western releases of the time.
According to Hiromasa Iwasaki, the director on Ys 1 & 2, NEC and Hudson had the tendancy to hire English teachers living in Japan, rather than actual English voice actors. But since he was director on Ys 1 & 2, he was able to take control of that. He said that the initial demo he received for the voice acting was absolutely horrible. He understands English pretty well, so he could tell how bad it was. So he was able to get them to give in and hire known English voice actors. He was also director on Tengai Makyou 2 which was supposed to get a North American release, so he would have been in control of that dub as well. However, he said there was no way that game was gonna get released in the west because of the enormous budget of the game and all the changes that would be necessary for the North American market.
One other game that I feel has pretty good voice acting is Dungeon Explorer 2, which technically is by Working Designs. The way it worked out, TTI did the text translation and publishing duties while Working Design handled the dub, but without jokes.
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