The Reemergence of the Last Delusion Programmer: A Surprising Claim of a Revitalized Coding Journey

Iranian-American developer Nasir Gebelli played a critical role in the advancement of video games, having personally coded the first three Final Fantasy titles. His contributions earned him high praise from Doom creator John Romero, who once referred to Gebelli as his “programming god, my idol.” After years out of the limelight, Gebelli recently appeared in a Japanese documentary tracing the roots of Final Fantasy, reflecting on his career and creative journey, and casually stating that coding some of the most influential JRPGs in history was “fairly straightforward.”

A shorter version of the documentary from NHK World Japan, Legendary Games History: Final Fantasy, is available to watch for free online. An extended version featuring Gebelli was also recently released in Japan. I haven’t been able to find the full video online, but a clip of Gebelli was shared on Twitter by Japanese gaming enthusiast Genki. This marks the first interview the renowned developer has conducted in decades, garnering another mention from Romero: “Without Nasir, there is no DOOM. His work inspired many game developers.”

“I was creating games for Apple back in the late ’70s or ’80s,” Gebelli reflects in the documentary. “I started making some games for Apple II computers. Over a couple of years, I probably created around 10 or 15 games. All action titles. That was my forte.” Gebelli’s works include titles like Phantoms 5, Cyber Strike, Star Cruiser, Home Eggs, and Gorgon.

“I thought it was quite similar to what I was doing for Apple with the same processor,” he comments about his work on Final Fantasy. “I already knew practically all the machine code for that processor. So in terms of coding, it was quite straightforward. There was no learning curve. But I had never experienced any role-playing games until Final Fantasy.”

Gebelli addresses several programming challenges from the series’ design. “For instance, you’re navigating this level, and it contains this many messages,” he elucidates. “While you’re playing the game, if the computer can generate this background and messages and store them in temporary memory, and if needed display them, it’s going to consume much less memory. It was a challenge, but it was also exhilarating to be able to create something innovative. And it was enjoyable to collaborate with the team, especially with [Hironobu Sakaguchi-san]. When he envisioned something, whether it was a simple message on the screen or more complex, and you performed the task, displayed it on a monitor, and observed the joy in the eyes of those with the vision, that’s satisfying.”

When such challenges arose, Gebelli mentioned that he’d ponder potential solutions that came to mind and “just select the one that I felt at the time was more engaging. And if I was able to code it, that would be my selection.” This aligns with past remarks indicating much of his programming begins with mental visualization.

The most amusing part of this documentary snippet is Gebelli’s assessment of what appears to be the original Famicom version of Final Fantasy 1. As he navigates through an airship segment, Gebelli notes: “Honestly looking at it, it could, visually, improve if it was slowed down by about 10%.”

The irony is that, as Automaton previously noted (quoting an article from Japanese site MagMix), coding the Final Fantasy airship’s brisk motion was regarded as one of Gebelli’s most notable achievements at the time.

It has been speculated that one reason the original Final Fantasy games weren’t ported for 16 years and went without a remaster for an astonishing 31 years, is that no one else could match or replicate Gebelli’s code, or at least the results of it, on modern platforms. Yet here is the man himself stating, in many words, that it wasn’t overly complicated, it could even be improved, and perhaps should be a tad slower too. I suspect nobody…