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HAL Laboratory

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HAL Laboratory, Inc.
Company typePrivate
IndustryVideo game industry
FoundedFebruary 21, 1980[1]
HeadquartersChiyoda, Tokyo, Japan
Key people
Satoru Iwata (former president)
Masahiro Sakurai
ProductsVideo games
Number of employees
137
Websitehttp://www.hallab.co.jp/

HAL Laboratory, Inc. (株式会社ハル研究所, Kabushikigaisha Haru Kenkyūsho) is a Japanese video game developer that was founded on February 21, 1980. Its name comes from the HAL 9000 computer in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey.[2] The company is most famous for its character Kirby, the protagonist of the eponymous game series, as well as the Super Smash Bros. series. It is an independent studio, creating games exclusively for Nintendo.

HAL Laboratory started off making games for the MSX system and the Commodore VIC-20.[3] During the early 1980s, some of their games since the 1986 Family Computer Disk System game Gall Force: Eternal Story (based on the anime film of the same name) have been released also on Nintendo systems.

In many of its games during the early to mid-'90s it used the name HALKEN (derived from their literal Japanese name "HAL KENkyūsho") as well as HAL Laboratory. Some of its early titles were also released as HAL America, a North American subsidiary of the company.

The current president of Nintendo, Satoru Iwata, was a former president of HAL. Other important figures include Masahiro Sakurai, who created the Kirby character and the Super Smash Bros. franchise, and now leads his own company, Sora Ltd.

List of games

C64

MSX

MSX2

Family Computer Disk System

Nintendo Entertainment System

Super NES

NCAA Basketball was produced for HAL America by Tim Rooney and Adam Flick, and programmed by Sculptured Software in Salt Lake City. The completed game was sold to Nintendo of America, who released it in the US.

Nintendo 64

Nintendo GameCube

Game Boy

Game Boy Advance

Nintendo DS

Wii

Windows

References

  1. ^ "Company". Retrieved 2007-09-17.
  2. ^ IGN: GDC 2005: Iwata Keynote Transcript
  3. ^ commodore.ca | History | Michael Tomzyck VIC-20 Executive
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