Original Final Fantasy programmer reappears after years of silence, casually says writing his legendary code "was pretty simple" and it could even be better

Iranian-American programmer Nasir Gebelli was instrumental in the evolution of video games and notably programmed the first three Final Fantasy games himself, consequently earning the adoration of Doom Guy John Romero, who previously called Gebelli his "programming god, my idol." After spending years out of the public eye, Gebelli recently appeared in a Japanese documentary chronicling the origins of Final Fantasy to discuss his work history and creative process, and to casually say that programming some of the most influential JRPGs in history "was pretty simple."

A shorter version of the documentary from NHK World Japan, Legendary Games Chronicle: Final Fantasy, is available to watch for free online. An expanded version featuring Gebelli was more recently released in Japanese. I haven't been able to find the full video listed online, but a clip of Gebelli was shared on Twitter by Japanese gaming hound Genki. This is the first interview that the famous programmer has done in many years, and it earned yet another shoutout from Romero: "Without Nasir, there is no DOOM. His work was the inspiration for so many game developers."

"I was making games for Apple back in the 80s or late 70s," Gebelli recalls in the documentary. "I started doing some video games for Apple 2 computers. I probably did, in a couple of years, 10, 15 games. All action games. That was my specialty." Gebelli's works include games like Phantoms Five, Cyber Strike, Star Cruiser, Space Eggs, and Gorgon.

"I thought it was pretty similar to what I was doing for Apple in the same processor," he says of work on Final Fantasy. "I already knew just about every machine code for that processor. So as far as coding, it was pretty simple. There was no learning curve. But I'd never seen any role-playing games until Final Fantasy."

Gebelli points to a few programming challenges from the series' development. "For example, you're playing this level, and this level has this many messages," he explains. "While you're playing the game, if the computer can create this background and messages and store them in the temporary memory, and if needed display them, it's gonna take much less memory. It was a challenge, but at the same time it was exciting to be able to do something different. And it was also fun to work with the team, especially with [Hironobu Sakaguchi-san]. When he had a vision for something, whether it's a simple message playing on the screen or something, and you do the work, display it on a monitor, and you look at people that have this vision and see their eyes light up, that's satisfaction."

When such challenges came up, Gebelli says he would consider the possible solutions that came to mind and then "just pick the one that I felt at the time was more interesting. And if I could code it, that would be my choice." This lines up with previous comments suggesting much of his programming starts with mental imagery.

The most amusing section of this snippet of the documentary may be Gebelli's assessment of what appears to be the original Famicom version of Final Fantasy 1. As he plays through an airship section, Gebelli remarks: "Actually looking at it, it could, visually, look better if it was at least, like, 10% slower."

The irony here is that, as Automaton previously reported (citing an article from Japanese site MagMix), programming the Final Fantasy airship's high-speed movement was seen as one of Gebelli's greatest accomplishments at the time.

It's been speculated that one of the reasons the original Final Fantasy games weren't ported for 16 years, and weren't remastered for a staggering 31 years, is that nobody else could match or replicate Gebelli's code, or at least the practical effects of it, on new platforms. Yet here's the man himself saying, in so many words, yep, wasn't that hard, could be better, and maybe a little slower even. I guess nobody's immune to hindsight.

Skip ahead just a few years in gaming history and Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth is now Steam Deck verified ahead of the JRPG's PC launch next week so that you can play "in the bathroom… wherever you want."