Eleven days before Square released Final Fantasy for the Famicom, the company put another game on Japanese store shelves. It was called JJ, with the subtitle Tobidase Daisakusen Part II, and it represented a very different path from the role-playing series that would soon transform Square into one of Japan’s most recognizable game developers.
Released on December 7, 1987, for 4,500 yen, JJ was a fast forward-scrolling action game built around running, jumping, shooting, and the illusion of movement into the screen. Famitsu’s surviving database identifies Square as the manufacturer and classifies the game as a shooting title, while surviving cartridges carry the product code SQF-JJ. The original instruction manual goes further, identifying the game as compatible with Nintendo’s Famicom 3D System and explicitly crediting its program to Nasir Gebelli.
Today JJ is easy to overlook. It never received an official North American release; it was followed almost immediately by Final Fantasy, and its stereoscopic hardware belonged to a short-lived branch of Famicom history. Yet the game is important precisely because of where it appears in Square’s timeline. It preserves the work of programmers, artists, and designers who were experimenting with speed, perspective, graphics, music, and three-dimensional effects just before several of them turned their attention toward the project that would establish the Final Fantasy series.
From Tobidase Daisakusen to JJ
JJ was a sequel to Tobidase Daisakusen, the March 1987 Famicom Disk System game later released in North America as The 3-D Battles of WorldRunner. Nintendo’s own history describes the original as a forward-scrolling action game divided into eight stages. Players controlled a character moving toward the horizon, jumping over hazards and confronting enemies while the landscape rushed toward the screen. An optional “Super 3D Mode” could be viewed using special glasses sold separately.
The resemblance to Sega’s Space Harrier has followed WorldRunner through decades of retrospective discussion, and it is difficult to miss. Both games used a perspective facing into the screen, filled the player’s path with obstacles and enemies, and relied on rapid scaling and movement to suggest depth on hardware that could not create true polygonal 3D environments.
What mattered for Square, however, was what its programmers could make the Famicom appear to do.
The original Tobidase Daisakusen demonstrated that the machine could create the sensation of racing forward through a landscape instead of simply moving horizontally from one side of a screen to another. JJ returned to that idea before the end of the same year, but it altered the presentation, increased the intensity, moved the Japanese release from disk to cartridge, and adopted Nintendo’s new Famicom 3D System.
The result feels less like a completely separate invention and more like Square revisiting a technical experiment while its developers still had the knowledge fresh in their hands.
Nasir Gebelli and Square’s Early 3D Experiments
The most important name attached directly to JJ is Nasir Gebelli.
Gebelli had already become known in American computer gaming through his Apple II work before his association with Square. In a later Square Enix interview, Hiromichi Tanaka recalled that Square owner Masafumi Miyamoto met Gebelli through an industry gathering associated with CES. Square employees including Tanaka and Hironobu Sakaguchi already knew Gebelli’s Apple II games and regarded him as an unusually capable programmer. According to Tanaka, Gebelli’s first projects with Square included The 3-D Battles of WorldRunner and Rad Racer, followed by the original Final Fantasy.
That recollection helps explain why games such as WorldRunner, Rad Racer, and JJ appeared when they did. Square had gained access to a programmer whose reputation had been built partly on extracting unusual speed and graphical effects from limited hardware.
The original JJ manual provides unusually strong evidence of Gebelli’s role because its closing material contains the credit “PROGRAM © 1987 NASIR.” Rather than relying entirely on later databases to reconstruct the development team, the surviving manual itself ties Gebelli directly to the game’s programming.
John Romero’s 1998 interview with Gebelli provides additional insight into the methods behind that programming. Romero later recalled that Gebelli wrote his NES games using an Apple II as his development machine and cross-developed the software for Nintendo hardware. Romero also described Gebelli as an assembly-language programmer who worked in an unusually direct fashion.
Those methods help place JJ within a recognizable line of Square technical experimentation. It was created during a period when the studio was repeatedly returning to rapid scrolling, simulated depth, and stereoscopic effects, while Gebelli’s programming abilities were being applied across multiple Famicom projects.
A Darker and Faster Sequel
At first glance, JJ follows the structure established by its predecessor. The player races toward the horizon through alien environments, shifting left and right while timing enormous jumps across holes, barriers, enemies, and other hazards. Weapons and useful items appear along the route, while large serpentine enemies wait at the ends of worlds.
Yet the visual tone is noticeably different.
Where Tobidase Daisakusen could be colorful and almost whimsical, JJ leans toward stranger and more threatening imagery. Eyes roll and leap through environments. Mechanical structures and turrets rise from the ground. Skeleton-like creatures, flying enemies, alien forms, fire, pits, and strange geometric obstacles crowd the player’s path. Later areas take on increasingly technological and surreal appearances.
The game is also relentless about forward motion. Its challenge depends heavily on recognizing patterns and deciding when to jump before an obstacle has fully reached the foreground. Because the player’s viewpoint faces into the screen, distance must be judged differently from a conventional side-scrolling platform game. A gap that appears small on the horizon can consume much of the screen only seconds later.
Players gradually learn that JJ is less random than it first appears. Enemy placement, obstacles, gaps, and useful routes can be memorized. Successful play therefore becomes a mixture of reaction and rehearsal. The game may initially look like chaos rushing toward the player, but repeated attempts reveal constructed sequences that can be learned.
Retrospective documentation also notes meaningful differences from the first game. Stage layouts were changed, enemies were redesigned, the visual presentation received a substantial overhaul, and the sequel removed some of the player’s ability to manipulate running speed. The result is a game that feels harsher and more committed to forcing the player to master its timing.
From the Disk System to a Famicom Cartridge
There was also a significant physical difference between the Japanese versions of the two games.
Tobidase Daisakusen had been released for Nintendo’s Famicom Disk System. JJ appeared as a conventional Famicom cartridge.
Surviving cartridge documentation identifies the game as SQF-JJ and shows a 128 KB program ROM using Nintendo’s HVC-UNROM-03 circuit board. The cartridge uses mapper 2, vertical mirroring, 8 KB of video RAM, and no battery-backed memory. The surviving board information even preserves manufacturing date codes from 1987.
These specifications are more than collector trivia. They preserve part of the physical history of the game and show how JJ existed as a manufactured object in Square’s late 1987 catalog. Unlike software that survives primarily through screenshots or emulation, original cartridges, circuit boards, labels, manuals, and packaging allow researchers to reconstruct how the game was produced and sold.
The move to cartridge also separated JJ visually from its predecessor. The sequel was no longer simply another disk associated with the earlier release. It had its own Square product code, packaging, identity, and place on Famicom store shelves.
Nintendo’s Famicom 3D System
The most distinctive hardware connection belonged to Nintendo’s Famicom 3D System.
Nintendo released the peripheral on October 21, 1987, less than seven weeks before JJ. The system used goggle-like glasses connected to the Famicom through an adapter. Nintendo explains that the device alternated images intended for the player’s left and right eyes, creating a stereoscopic effect when viewed through the 3D Scope.
JJ was designed to support it.
This represented an evolution from the first Tobidase Daisakusen, which had offered its own stereoscopic presentation using separate glasses. With JJ, Square was participating in Nintendo’s dedicated hardware approach to home-console 3D.
For a modern audience accustomed to polygonal graphics, virtual reality headsets, and autostereoscopic screens, the technology can seem like a curiosity. In 1987, however, it represented an attempt to answer a question that game designers had been asking almost from the beginning of the medium: how could a flat television screen make a player feel that the game extended into physical space?
JJ attacked that problem from two directions simultaneously. Even without the glasses, its forward-scrolling perspective produced a constant illusion of depth. With the Famicom 3D System active, the game added stereoscopic separation on top of that existing visual trick.
Nintendo’s peripheral was never destined to become a standard part of the Famicom experience, but JJ survives as evidence of a moment when Nintendo and several developers were actively experimenting with 3D television gaming decades before the concept returned through systems such as the Nintendo 3DS and modern virtual reality hardware.
Running Through Eight Hostile Worlds
The basic structure inherited from WorldRunner remained easy to understand. Jack races through a sequence of worlds while hostile creatures and environmental hazards attempt to stop him.
What gives JJ its personality is how aggressively it fills that structure with strange imagery.
Early areas introduce the player to disembodied eyes, fire, turrets, gaps, and mechanical obstacles. Later worlds introduce new variations, including skeleton-like figures, airborne creatures, spring-like devices used to cross enormous spaces, deceptive obstacles, alien forms, and increasingly dense arrangements of hazards. Boss encounters shift the action by allowing Jack to fight large flying serpentine creatures while equipped for aerial movement.
The viewpoint is critical to everything. Obstacles begin small in the distance and rapidly increase in size as Jack approaches. The player is constantly interpreting the road ahead, deciding whether an object is dangerous, useful, avoidable, or something that must be jumped.
The original manual is especially valuable for understanding these mechanics because it documents the game’s terminology, items, controls, characters, stages, story, and 3D operation rather than forcing historians to reconstruct them entirely through modern play.
Modern descriptions sometimes classify JJ as a shooter and sometimes as an action game or platform-shooter hybrid. None of those labels completely captures the experience. Shooting matters, particularly during encounters, but much of the tension comes from movement. Jack survives by reading the terrain, placing himself correctly, and jumping at exactly the right moment while the world continually advances toward him.
Takashi Tokita and Square’s Young Development Staff
One of the most interesting pieces of evidence about JJ comes from Takashi Tokita, who later became closely associated with games such as Final Fantasy IV, Live A Live, and Chrono Trigger.
Looking back on his early years at Square, Tokita recalled that he began as a part-time employee and initially worked as a pixel artist. He specifically named JJ: Tobidase Daisakusen Part II among the projects he worked on during this period, together with titles including Hanjuku Hero and The Final Fantasy Legend. Tokita explained that his work in those early years was not restricted to drawing pixels. He contributed ideas and performed a variety of tasks as projects required.
That recollection is important because JJ‘s surviving official credits are sparse compared with the elaborate credit sequences of later games. Tokita’s firsthand testimony restores another member of the development group to the historical record.
It also reveals something about Square itself.
The company that made JJ was still young enough for individual employees to cross boundaries between jobs. Artists might contribute design ideas. Programmers could become central creative forces. Staff members who would later be associated with enormous role-playing games were still learning production by working on action games, racing games, experimental releases, and smaller Famicom projects.
That environment produced JJ, but it was also preparing the people who would build Square’s later identity.
Music Preserved by Square Enix
The musical history of JJ has also survived unusually well for such an obscure release.
In 2021, Square Enix Music released Preserved Tracks Collection from 1986–1996, an official archival compilation devoted to music from early Square games. The collection includes Tobidase Daisakusen, Highway Star, JJ, Square’s Tom Sawyer, and several other titles from the company’s pre-PlayStation history. Square Enix presented the project under the supervision of Nobuo Uematsu.
Eight pieces are preserved specifically for JJ: “Field,” “Bonus Stage,” “Boss 1,” “Boss 2,” “Miss,” “Stage Clear,” “Game Over,” and “Ending.”
Their preservation places JJ within the same musical archive as better-remembered Square productions and emphasizes how much development history can disappear when a game itself falls outside a company’s famous franchises.
For decades, someone interested in JJ might have known its music mainly through an original cartridge, recorded gameplay, or emulation. The Square Enix collection formally returned those pieces to the company’s historical catalog.
Eleven Days Before Final Fantasy
Perhaps no fact about JJ is more striking than its position on the calendar.
Famitsu records JJ on December 7, 1987. Final Fantasy followed on December 18.
The two games look as though they belong to different histories.
One is a relentless forward-scrolling action game filled with jumping, alien landscapes, stereoscopic effects, and programming tricks designed to suggest speed and depth. The other is a menu-driven role-playing game about warriors, crystals, towns, dungeons, spells, and turn-based battles.
Yet many of the people and technical experiences surrounding them overlapped.
Hiromichi Tanaka’s recollections connect Gebelli’s arrival at Square first to WorldRunner and Rad Racer, then to Final Fantasy. JJ‘s own manual confirms Gebelli was still programming Square’s forward-scrolling experiments in 1987. Takashi Tokita’s later testimony places another future Square veteran on the project. Only days after JJ reached Japanese stores, Final Fantasy appeared and began the series that would eventually overshadow almost everything Square had released before it.
That sequence makes JJ a fascinating snapshot of a studio in transition.
It should not be described merely as a failed path that Square abandoned for role-playing games. The programming knowledge, production experience, visual experimentation, and working relationships developed through games like WorldRunner, Rad Racer, and JJ were part of the same company culture from which Final Fantasy emerged.
Why JJ Matters
JJ: Tobidase Daisakusen Part II did not become a major franchise. It remained in Japan. Its specialized 3D hardware became a historical curiosity. Its predecessor is better remembered in the West because 3-D WorldRunner actually received an American release, while the game that followed JJ in Square’s December 1987 calendar became one of the most important Japanese role-playing games ever produced.
That obscurity is exactly why JJ deserves attention.
The game preserves Square before its identity became inseparable from RPGs. It shows the company experimenting with simulated three-dimensional space on 8-bit hardware, using a programmer famous for technical skill, adopting Nintendo’s stereoscopic accessory, and allowing young staff members to work across artistic and design roles.
Its cartridge, manual, circuit board, music, and surviving developer interviews make it unusually possible to reconstruct that history.
Seen only as a game, JJ is an aggressive and unusual Famicom sequel filled with alien imagery, enormous jumps, speeding landscapes, and serpentine bosses.
Seen historically, it is something more.
It is Square standing at the end of one experiment and the beginning of another, with Nasir Gebelli’s name printed in its manual, Takashi Tokita learning his craft among the development staff, Nobuo Uematsu’s music becoming part of the company’s archival record, Nintendo experimenting with stereoscopic hardware, and Final Fantasy waiting only eleven days further down the calendar.
For a game largely forgotten outside dedicated Famicom circles, JJ occupies a remarkable place in video game history.
Sources & Further Reading
Square. JJ [SQF-JJ] Instruction Manual. 1987. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/jj-sqf-jj-fc-jp-manual-600-dpi
Square Enix. “JJ.” Square Enix Game Archive. Accessed October 13, 2026. https://www.jp.square-enix.com/archive/jj/
Famitsu. “JJ.” Famitsu.com. Accessed October 13, 2026. https://www.famitsu.com/game/title/19895/page/1
Famitsu. “Family Computer Release Schedule: December 1987.” Famitsu.com. Accessed October 13, 2026. https://www.famitsu.com/schedule/fc/198712
Famitsu. “Takashi Tokita Interview.” October 10, 2021. Famitsu.com. https://www.famitsu.com/news/202110/10236398.html
Romero, John. “Nasir Gebelli Interview on YouTube.” Rome.ro, February 7, 2017. https://rome.ro/news/2017/2/7/nasir-gebelli-interview-on-youtube
Wawro, Alex. “Watch John Romero’s ’90s Chat with Nasir Gebelli about Coding Final Fantasy.” Game Developer, March 22, 2017. https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/watch-john-romero-s-90s-chat-with-nasir-gebelli-about-coding-i-final-fantasy-i-
Sakaguchi, Hironobu. “The Man Behind the Fantasies.” Next Generation, no. 50 (February 1999): 87–90. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/NEXT_Generation_50/page/n87/mode/2up
RetroMags. “Next Generation Issue 50.” RetroMags. Accessed October 13, 2026. https://www.retromags.com/magazines/usa/next-generation/next-generation-issue-50/
Square Enix. “Final Fantasy III 30th Anniversary Special Interview Vol. 1.” Final Fantasy Portal Site. Accessed October 13, 2026. https://na.finalfantasy.com/topics/171
Nintendo. “Famicom History.” Nintendo Co., Ltd. Accessed October 13, 2026. https://www.nintendo.com/jp/famicom/history/index.html
Square Enix Music. Preserved Tracks Collection from 1986–1996. 2021. Square Enix. https://www.jp.square-enix.com/music/lineup/item/SQEX-10896-8.html
NES Cart Database. “JJ Tobidase Daisakusen Part 2.” Accessed October 13, 2026. https://nescartdb.com/profile/view/2225/jj-tobidase-daisakusen-part-2
RF Generation. “JJ: Tobidase Daisakusen Part 2.” Accessed October 13, 2026. https://www.rfgeneration.com/cgi-bin/getinfo.pl?ID=J-027-S-04610-A
MobyGames. “JJ: Tobidase Daisakusen Part 2.” Accessed October 13, 2026. https://www.mobygames.com/game/22480/jj-tobidase-daisakusen-part-2/
Arcade-History. “JJ Tobidase Daisakusen Part 2 [Model SQF-JJ].” Accessed October 13, 2026. https://www.arcade-history.com/game/54235/jj-tobidase-daisakusen-part-2-model-sqf-jj
UVList. “JJ: Tobidase Daisakusen Part 2.” Universal Videogame List. Accessed October 13, 2026. https://www.uvlist.net/game-157511-JJ%2BTobidase%2BDaisakusen%2BPart%2B2
Retro Game Manual Archive. “JJ, 1987/Famicom.” Accessed October 13, 2026. https://gamemanual.midnightmeattrain.com/entry/JJ
World of Longplays. “JJ 3D.” Accessed October 13, 2026. https://longplays.org/infusions/longplays/longplays.php?cat_id=15&longplay_id=2635
Retoge Mag. “Famicom Tsūshin, November 27, 1987, No. 24.” Accessed October 13, 2026. https://retoge-mag.websa.jp/archives/6557
AtWiki. “Tobidase Daisakusen / JJ.” Game Catalog Wiki. Accessed October 13, 2026. https://w.atwiki.jp/gcmatome/pages/8936.html
BEEP. “JJ.” BEEP Akihabara. Accessed October 13, 2026. https://www.beep-shop.com/item_entry/54382/