Co-founder of id Software and one of the minds behind the seminal FPS Doom, John Romero, has honoured a legendary Square programmer on social media, calling him an “inspiration”.
Sharing his thoughts in the wake of Japanese broadcaster NHK’s interview with Nasir Gebelli, who lead programmer on the Final Fantasy games on NES and SNES action RPG Secret of Mana, Romero says “Without Nasir, there is no DOOM.” High, high praise indeed.
This makes sense, because, without Gebelli, there may well have been no Final Fantasy, one of the biggest video game franchises in the world. And NHK’s interview, which was broadcast back in October 2024 and got an extended rerelease on 30th December (thanks, Time Extension!), is pretty significant because Gebelli essentially disappeared from the industry shortly after Mana’s 1993 release.
“Without Nasir, there is no DOOM. His work was the inspiration for so many game developers. #programmedbynasir”
Gebelli worked at Sirius Software and Gebelli Software (his own company), creating games for Apple II, before joining Square in 1986. Masafumi Miyamoto, founder of Square, and Hironobu Sakaguchi, the “father of Final Fantasy”, were fans of Gebelli’s work, and decided to hire the programmer to work on games for the Famicom 3D and, eventually, Final Fantasy.
Romero actually first met Gebelli at an Apple II Reunion event in Dallas, Texas. Romero was already a huge fan at the time and has gone on record before citing Gebelli as an inspiration. So, Romero interviewed Gebelli about his work.
This was the last known interview with Gebelli, who retired from game development to travel the world, until NHK’s recent interview. Genki_JPN has shared a clip of it over on X — where many people tagged Romero.
The extended version of the interview is only available in Japan, you can at least watch the original October ’24 version on NHK World’s website.
Are you a fan of Gebelli’s work? Let us know if you’ve managed to watch the interview in the comments.