Squaresoft programmer Nasir
Ever since I first played Secret of Mana back in 199godknowswhatyearitwas, one name in the opening credits caught my attention: Programmed by Nasir. Now, most game companies have a huge staff of devoted programmers, and seeing as many as 50 different credits for programming was no unusual feat in those days. Seeing only one name for code crunching was strange enough, but that it was only ONE name, and that it was a non-Japanese one, further added to the mysterious intruige. Today, while waiting for my doctor appointment to roll around, I decided to finally get to the bottom of the mystery of who, exactly, this "Nasir" person is. This was really catalyzed last night when I finally beat FF2 (YAY!) and saw his full name in the ending credits: Nasir Gebelli. Knowing his last name I now had enough information to find out everything there is to know about him, and I was quite suprised at his full story.
Nasir Gebelli got his start in computer programming in the very early 1980s (possibly even the late 1970s) as a computer science major. He apparently didn't do all that well in class and spent most of his time "programming" games. Back in these early days, home computers were NOT user friendly AT ALL and required some in-depth technical knowledge just to make a purchased software package run properly. Because of this, the people who were more drawn to computers were the ones who had a "how does this work? what can I do with it?" attitude. People who had enough interest to spend hours and hours pouring over code in order to figure out how to do whatever they wanted. These people were considered the hackers of their time, because frequently what they did was delve into other people's software to make their own. Nasir was one of these people, and created a slideshow program in this manner. In these days it was not unusual for a lone person to take their homebrew software to a computer store to show it off, and that's exactly what Nasir did. The manager of this store in particular was a Vietnam veteran named Jerry Jewell. He liked Nasir's simple program so much, that the two of them began creating a spin-off graphics program called "E-Z Draw". Jewell made rounds in the Bay Area location and sold enough copies that he and Gebelli began writing more programs together, specifically games.
Nasir had learned of a graphics technique that eliminated the undesireable "flicker" of contemporary computer graphics, and using it, was able to make games that had more graphical flare. However, the games he made were all pretty similar to Space Invaders as they all employed the concept of shooting lots of things before they shoot you. The games were addictively simple, and were amazingly similar in terms of playability to coin-op (read: arcade) machines of the time which had custom chipsets to pound out advanced (for their time) graphics. Before Nasir, people did not realize that such graphics were even possible on an Apple home computer, Nasir's computer of choice. Because of this, the games that Gebelli and Jewell made and sold became so popular that they were able to form their own software company along with the owner of the store where they got their start. This company was called Sirius Software, and their biggest hit was Space Eggs, one of 12 titles that they turned out in that year.
This became Nasir's calling card; simple game play, spectacular graphics, and short development cycles. Nasir, working alone, was able to churn out a full (albeit simple) game in as little as 30 hours. Consider that today, this is how long some games take just to finish, and that in the early 1980s, your programming choices were usually cumbersome and/or daunting, usually involving editting raw hexidecimal code. However, the market for games nearly went dry in the year 1983 in what is commonly referred to as "the big crash". Many companies simply disappeared, Atari's parent company (Warner Communications) lost quite a bit of money from shareholders who wanted out. The problem was quantity over quality. Everyone who was anyone in the gaming industry was cranking out games faster than a speeding lightcycle, but not always to good results. Simply ask someone about the Atari game "E.T." if you want to know how bad things got. The market really toppled in 1984 when the public basically turned their backs on gaming. However, in 1985, Nintendo introduced their Nintendo Entertainment System which was the spark that re-lit the dying fire of the gaming world. It could push out graphics and sound that were respectable, but by no means cutting edge. The system could not be expanded in any way and came only with relatively simple game controllers and featured no dip-switches of any kind (a somewhat radical departure in that time). It's memory capabilities were decent, but structurally limited. In short, it was nothing really amazing. So why was it so succesful? Simple, in 1985 there was no video game market anymore. There was no competition, so it was easy for Nintendo to walk right in and steal the crown, even though the flood of bad games carried itelf over just fine. Almost 20 years later they're still going strong thanks to their initial and sophmore efforts. A while later, Nasir joined ranks with Squaresoft, a company which, at the time, was so small it could hardly be called a company.
In Square's early days they cranked out titles that WOULD have been bland, but for one gimmick. This is probably why they approached Nasir, seeing as he was very good with these sorts of games. His first game with the company was Rad Racer, known for being a simplistic yet fun racing game with one cool concept: IT WAS IN 3-D! Now, I don't mean that it made use of polygons or CG rendered movies, or even vector graphics. If, during gameplay, you pressed the select button, the screen would double up into shades of red and blue, which through the included glasses, made the gameplay elements appear to be 3-deminsional. This was a revolutionary gimmick in the early NES days, and Square used it again in their "Space Harrier clone" 3-D Worldrunner. However, gimmick alone did not guarantee revenue, and Square saw some VERY bad financial times. A man now famous to us, Hironobu Sakaguchi, dug out his D&D books, spent a few months playing the popular Dragon Quest (Dragon Warrior in the US), and decided that if Square was going to go out, it would go out with a bang, a console RPG that fused elements of both DQ and D&D, and because it was going to be Square's goodbye, it was given a title appropriate for such an event: Final Fantasy. Nasir pounded out the code for the game with varying results, but for a one man programming team, what he did was astonishing. The game was so well recieved, even with its bugs in place, that Square managed to get itself back together. They soon released a (dubiously titled) sequel, Final Fantasy 2, with Nasir once again doing all the programming.
Nasir did not do any programming work for Square for a few years, having made QUITE a bit of money. His next project was an epic that was planned for Nintendo's CD add-on to the SNES, but the company making the add-on (Sony) had a falling out, and the device was never released, leaving the project hanging in limbo. Square managed to re-adapt the game for the Super Nintendo in 1993. The game was Seiken Densetsu 2, released in America as The Secret of Mana. The game was unashamedly glitchy at the time of its release, with odd hit-detection, latency issues, and even map issues, all of which caused serious gameplay problems, but not enough to overshadow the acclaim it recieved. In fact, the game was so popular in America that it was what arguably got the ball really rolling for them.
Nasir has not worked for Squaresoft since, and currently lives in Sacramento, CA where he programs at his leisure.
