Nasir Gebelli, the programmer behind the first three Final Fantasy games, recently discussed his work in a Japanese documentary, Legendary Games Chronicle: Final Fantasy (shorter English version). Known for his foundational contributions to the series, Gebelli reflected on his programming process, team collaborations, and the challenges he encountered.
Gebelli, who had previously developed action games for Apple II, described his transition to programming for Final Fantasy as seamless.
“I thought it was pretty similar to what I was doing for Apple in the same processor. 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.”
One notable challenge was optimizing memory usage. Gebelli programmed dynamic rendering systems to manage in-game messages and backgrounds while conserving memory, which he described as both a challenge and an opportunity to innovate.
"For example, you're playing this level, and this level has this many messages. 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."
Gebelli credited Hironobu Sakaguchi’s leadership as pivotal to the project’s success.
"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."
One of the funniest parts of this documentary is Gebelli's reaction to him playing the original Famicom version of Final Fantasy I. While playing through the airship segment, he comments:
"Actually looking at it, it could, visually, look better if it was at least, like, 10% slower."
Gebelli’s innovative coding techniques posed challenges for developers working on modern remasters, highlighting the complexity and uniqueness of his contributions. After completing Secret of Mana, Gebelli retired from game development, making rare public appearances, such as his recent interview for the documentary.
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