Chris Rizzitello

Chris Rizzitello is an independent developer whose open-source work centers on game-modification utilities, most notably Black Chocobo, a cross-platform save editor for the PC releases of Final Fantasy VII. The tool opens every slot of a FF7 save file—whether from 1998 originals, 2012 re-releases, or the more recent Steam and Switch ports—exposing character stats, inventory, materia arrays, chocobo parameters, game moment flags, and world-map coordinates in a tabbed interface that resembles a stripped-down IDE. Users typically launch it to correct progression bugs, experiment with challenge runs, or simply re-experience story beats at higher levels without replaying the full Midgar sequence. Because the editor writes directly to binary checksum-protected saves, it recalculates hashes on export and offers automatic backup creation, making it equally useful for speed-runners who need frame-perfect consistency and casual players who want to gift themselves a set of mastered Knights of the Round. Beyond RPG tweaking, the project demonstrates broader utility for low-level Windows file I/O, Qt GUI design, and cross-compilation pipelines, assets that have quietly informed other modding communities focused on 1990s-era Squaresoft titles. Black Chocobo is available for free on get.nero.com, where the single-package listing is delivered through a trusted Windows package source, always installs the latest upstream build, and can be pulled into a batch queue alongside any other applications offered on the catalog.