John Romero Interview by Danny

It's a long interview detailing his early days as the programmer when the industry is starting up leading to DOOM and such. Quite insightful. Much better than what usual game publications do.

And, I was surprised to learn about another personality Nasir Gebeli that inspired Romero and has huge contributions and influence to the games as we know today. Glad to see him giving credit where it's due unlike Japanese so called proud designers that have totally forgot him. Take that weeaboos even your precious Japanese games and biggest JRPG franchise is designed by the western dev originally from the non-console background.

P.S. He didn't talk about Blackroom.

'The game industry started with indie games' -John Romero

Final Fantasy 1 was coded **in entirety** by an Iranian coder who immigrated to US -- the absolute legend Nasir Gebelli. -Brenda Romero

Nasir made some early first-person shooting games for the Apple II in the early '80s, like Horizon V and Zenith. John Romero was a big fan, inspiring him to start making his own games and eventually FPS like Hovertank, Catacomb, Wolfenstein and Doom.

Meanwhile in Japan, Hironobu Sakaguchi was also a big fan of Nasir. Sakaguchi invited him over from America to join his startup company, Squaresoft, where Nasir programmed games like Rad Racer, 3D WorldRunner, and JRPGs like Final Fantasy 1-3 and Secret of Mana. And then he retired, and wasn't heard from again.

saw it when it was first released some weeks ago. i had no idea Romero's was so chill n cool

@kozio: Kewl , I'm from Iran too

This is my issue with the people who blindly trash "indies" - it's not really a new thing, and while some experiences can probably only arise from the resources of big-budget AAA, creativity, unique gaming experiences, and in many ways the history of gaming, has strong ties to small risk-taking groups.

I played Sim Ant :-P

I've seen interviews where Hironobu Sakaguchi also gave Nasir due credit. Sakaguchi said he was a fan of Nasir at first, then they become friends while working together at Squaresoft, and that they've still kept in touch. Sakaguchi himself also came from a computer background. In fact, most Japanese developers in the '80s came from arcade and computer backgrounds.

By the way, here's the 1998 interview that John Romero was referencing: