Nasir Gebelli

In 1980, Jerry Jewell was the sales manager of a Sacramento, CA Computerland location and an Iranian programmer named Nasir Gebelli used to come in and show off his latest programs. After seeing Nasir's latest, a slideshow program, Jerry left Computerland and co-founded Sirius Software with Nasir, quickly turning out EZ Draw, their first product, a graphics editing suite.

As the head programmer for Sirius Software, Nasir helped propel the company's profits into the millions. Nasir was extremely prolific, churning out 12 games in one year alone. Nasir didn't like the way Sirius was being run and decided to leave and start anew and create a new company, Gebelli Software, which produced and published a small number of titles.

After the closing of Gebelli Software in 1984, Nasir (an Iranian) went on a long vacation travelling the world. He came back in 1986 and went to visit his friend Doug Carlston, owner of Broderbund . He told Doug he wanted to get back to game coding and asked what he should do. Doug told him about the rise of the Nintendo gaming system and that Nasir should start programming on it - Doug offered to fly to Japan with Nasir and introduce him to his friends at Square.

Nasir met with Masafumi Miyamoto, Square founder and President. The programmers at Square were well aware of Nasir's legendary reputation and were excited to have him there. This helped Nasir make the decision to join Square in Japan and work on games for them.

The known Square games that Nasir produced are: Battles of the 3D World Runner, Rad Racer, Rad Racer II, Final Fantasy I, Final Fantasy II, Final Fantasy III and Secret of Mana.

After programming these games, Nasir once again disappeared and traveled the world, this time with much more money in the bank. He basically retired with the income from Square royalties.

In August 1998, Nasir resurfaced to attend John Romero's 1998 Apple II Reunion in Dallas, TX at the Ion Storm offices.

Nasir once more remains in hiding - he is surprisingly non-technology-oriented now.