Nasir Gebelli

As a college student, he demonstrated a slide show program he'd written at a computer store, where he met Jerry Jewell, the store's owner.[5] In 1980 joined with a new company founded by Jewell and Terry Bradley, Sirius Software.[5] Gebelli's first game was Both Barrels.[6]

Within a year, Gebelli had already programmed twelve games.[5] He preferred to program directly from his head, rather than taking notes, so he quickly coded a game before he forgot the code.[7] His action games were well-received, and three of his games, Phantoms Five, Cyber Strike, and Star Cruiser, appeared on Softalk's Top Thirty software list in March 1981.[8] Six of his games later appeared on Softalk's Top Thirty list in August 1981, with the highest at number three.[9] His best-selling titles were Space Eggs and Gorgon,[1] which were clones of Moon Cresta and Defender, respectively.[10] Electronic Games referred to Gebelli as "ace designer Nasir" and gave Gorgon a positive review.[11] BYTE assured readers that Gorgon would not disappoint "Nasir Gabelli fans".[12] Gorgon sold at least 23,000 copies in a year, making it one of the best-selling computer games through June 1982.[13]

Gebelli's games made use of page flipping, which eliminated the flickering that was common in early Appe II games.[5] resolve the quality issues facing home computers at the time. He also believed that, in the future, virtually "everyone" will "have a computer" and that "the school of the future might be a central computer bank with students at home plugging into it via modem."[8]

He left Sirius that year to establish his own software company, Gebelli Software,[1] through which he released the 1982 Apple II game Horizon V, a first-person shooter with a radar mechanic.[14] That same year, he released the Apple II game Zenith, which added rotation of the player's ship.[15] In October 1982, Arcade Express reviewed Zenith and scored it 9 out of 10, stating "celebrated Nasir proves his reputation" with "this visually striking first-person space piloting and shooting" game.[16] In March 1983, however, Andromeda (fourth place for Atari 8-bit), Russki Duck (tied for sixth for Apple) and Horizon V (tenth place for Apple) received Softline's Dog of the Year awards "for badness in computer games" based on reader submissions.[17] Horizon V sold 5,000 copies during its first few months on sale in 1982.[13]

IBM arranged for Gebelli to produce launch titles for the IBM PCjr, announced in late 1983.[18] Gebelli's company would not prove very successful, and the video game crash of 1983 caused Gebelli Software to close.[1] Afterward, Gebelli went on a long vacation traveling the world. By the time he had retired from Apple II development, he had eight different games appear on Softalk's Apple II best-seller lists through to 1984, more than any other game designer for the platform.

While at Square, Nasir first programmed the game Tobidase Daisakusen for the Famicom Disk System, which had the official English name of "Jumpin' Jack", but was released in the U.S. as 3-D WorldRunner for the NES. It was released in early 1987.[6][19] Using a similar forward-scrolling effect to Sega's 1985 third-person rail shooter Space Harrier,[6] 3-D WorldRunner was a forward-scrolling pseudo-3D third-person platform game where players were free to move in any forward-scrolling direction and had to leap over obstacles and chasms. It was also notable for being one of the first stereoscopic video games.[19] His second Square project was Highway Star (Rad Racer in the U.S.), a stereoscopic 3-D racing game also designed for the Famicom 3D System in 1987.[1] He went on to program a sequel, Rad Racer II, released in 1990.[1]

According to Sakaguchi, the main reason that 3-D WorldRunner and Rad Racer were created was to show off the 3D programming techniques of Gebelli. At the time, Gebelli didn't know any Japanese, and there was no translator, so it was initially difficult to communicate between him and Sakaguchi. There were only three staff members working on both games, Gebelli, Sakaguchi, and graphic designer Kazuko Shibuya (who later worked on the Frontier games). Both games were commercially successful, selling about 500,000 copies each.[6]

Gebelli then teamed up with Sakaguchi, Nobuo Uematsu and Yoshitaka Amano as part of Square's A-Team to produce Final Fantasy, the first entry in the popular Final Fantasy series. A role-playing video game released for the NES in 1987 in Japan (it was released in the U.S. three years later in 1990), it featured several unique features, including an experimental character creation system that allowed the player to create their own parties and assign different character classes to party members;[20] the concept of time travel;[21] side-view battles, with the player characters on the right and the enemies on the left;[21] and the use of transportation for travel by ship, canoe and flying airship.[22] It also had what is considered to be the first RPG minigame, a sliding puzzle, which was added by Gebelli into the game despite it not being part of Squaresoft's original game design.[23]

He went on to program Final Fantasy II, released in 1988 (not to be confused with the initial U.S. release of Final Fantasy IV), introducing an "emotional story line, morally ambiguous characters, tragic events," and a story to be "emotionally experienced rather than concluded from gameplay and conversations." It also replaced traditional levels and experience points with a new activity-based progression system that required "gradual development of individual statistics through continuous actions of the same kind".[20] Final Fantasy II also featured open-ended exploration,[24] and introduced an innovative dialogue system where keywords or phrases can be memorized and mentioned during conversations with non-player characters.[25]

He then programmed Final Fantasy III, released in 1990 (not to be confused with the initial U.S. release of Final Fantasy VI), which introduced the classic job system, a character progression engine allowing the player to change the character classes, as well as acquire new and advanced classes and combine class abilities, during the course of the game.[26][27] Midway through the development of both Final Fantasy II and III, Gebelli was forced to return to Sacramento, California from Japan due to an expired work visa. The rest of the development staff followed him to Sacramento with needed materials and equipment and finished production of the games there.[28]

After completing Final Fantasy III, Gebelli took another long vacation and later returned to work on Seiken Densetsu II (released as Secret of Mana in the U.S.), the second entry in the Mana series, released in 1993. The game made advances to the action role-playing game genre, including its unique cooperative multiplayer gameplay. The game was created by team members behind the first three Final Fantasy titles: Gebelli, Koichi Ishii, and Hiromichi Tanaka. It was intended to be one of the first CD-ROM RPGs, as a launch title for Sony's SNES CD (PlayStation) add-on, but had to be altered to fit onto a standard SNES game cartridge after the SNES CD project was dropped.[29]

The game received considerable acclaim,[30] for its innovative pausable real-time battle system,[31][32] stamina bar,[33] the "Ring Command" menu system,[32] its innovative cooperative multiplayer gameplay,[30] where the second or third players could drop in and out of the game at any time rather than players having to join the game at the same time,[34] and the customizable AI settings for computer-controlled allies.[35] Following Secret of Mana, Gebelli's role as lead developer at Square was succeeded (for the most part) by Ken Narita.

• Both Barrels (1980, Apple II)
• Star Cruiser (1980, Apple II)
• Phantoms Five (1980, Apple II)
• Cyber Strike (1981, Apple II)
• Gorgon (1981, Apple II)
• Space Eggs (1981, Apple II)
• Pulsar II (1981, Apple II)
• Autobahn (1981, Apple II)

• Horizon V (1981, Apple II)
• Firebird (1981, Apple II)
• Russki Duck (1982, Apple II)
• Zenith (1982, Apple II)
• Neptune (1982, Apple II)
• ScubaVenture (1983, IBM PCjr)[43]
• Mouser (1983, IBM PCjr)[43]

• 3-D WorldRunner (1987, FDS/NES)
• Rad Racer (1987, NES)
• JJ: Tobidase Daisakusen Part 2 (1987, NES)
• Final Fantasy (1987, NES)
• Final Fantasy II (1988, NES)
• Final Fantasy III (1990, NES)
• Secret of Mana (1993, SNES)