History
HAL Laboratory was founded on February 21, 1980 in Kanda, Chiyoda Ward, Tokyo. Mitsuhiro Ikeda served as the first president and CEO. [4] The company was formed out of a Seibu Department Store in Ikebukuro, with many of the students who frequented the computer section working part-time. [5] This included Satoru Iwata and Satoshi Matsuoka. [6] [7] HAL initially started out of an apartment in Akihabara, [8] developing hardware peripherals. [9] An early investor was Iwasaki Giken, a company that programmed many of Nintendo's first video games. [10]
In its early years, it developed products like a universal remote, [11] the HAL Fax, which allowed users to fax directly from a computer, [12] and the HAL Catch, a cable that connected an electronic organizer to a PC. [5] Other products included the GSX-8800 sound board for the NEC PC-8001 in 1983, [13] the CAT trackball, [14] and the Hibiki FM tone generator and MIDI interface board in 1986. [10]
There have been conflicting claims on the origin of the company's name: during a GDC 2005 keynote, HAL alumnus and then-Nintendo president Satoru Iwata stated that HAL was named after the computer from 2001: A Space Odyssey , [15] while in a 2012 Iwata Asks interview, he said the company was named HAL because "each letter put [them] one step ahead of IBM." [1] [9] [16]
The company first made games for home computers, such as the MSX and VIC-20. These were initially unlicensed home computer versions of Namco's arcade games, including Pac-Man (Jelly Monsters [1] ) Rally-X, and Galaxian . However, HAL managed to be the first company to obtain a license from Namco for developing computer games. [17] [18]
Through its connection to Iwasaki Giken, HAL started its business relationship with Nintendo in 1984. [8] It assisted in the development of first-party Famicom games such as Pinball and Golf , while also creating original titles such as F1 Race . [18] [15] The company's previous experience developing games and its familiarity with the Famicom's CPU helped the developers make games faster than the competition. [9] In the west, some titles were published under HAL America Inc. (HAI), a North American subsidiary of the company led by Yash Terakura and based in Beaverton, Oregon. [19] Between 1987 and 1991, HAL also published several NES titles, including Stargate and Kabuki: Quantum Fighter. [20] Masahiro Sakurai joined the company in 1989. [7]
In 1991, the company moved to an office building overlooking Mount Fuji in Yamanashi. [4] [21] [22] In 1992, HAL spun off its non-Nintendo business as HAL Corporation. It continued to work on computer software and peripherals, including new versions of the universal remote controller. [23] [24] [25] This company continued to operate until around 2002. [26]
However, following the protracted development of Metal Slader Glory , the company was $1.5 billion yen in debt and on the verge of bankruptcy. [20] [27] [28] Nintendo offered to rescue HAL on the condition that Satoru Iwata were to be appointed its president. [4] In 1992, HAL released Kirby's Dream Land for the Nintendo Game Boy, [1] which was Iwata's first game as president. [29] HAL then found success soon after, releasing Kirby's Adventure , Kirby's Dream Course , and Mother 2. [18]
The company's current logo, Inutamago (literally "dog egg"), was created in 1998 by Shigesato Itoi. The imagery is meant to represent "an unexpected bond [...] one that brings the birth of something new". Reception was reportedly lukewarm at first. [9] [30] [31] The first game to use the logo was Super Smash Bros. [3] In 1999, HAL released Pokemon Snap for the Nintendo 64 and Pokemon Pinball on Game Boy Color [32] and established an R&D center in Tokyo that year. [4]
For a time, HAL struggled to develop a 3D Kirby game. Following the release of Kirby 64 in 2000, Iwata left to work at Nintendo [33] [34] and the company worked on three games that were ultimately cancelled. [35] [36] During this time, HAL also worked on Nintendo's hardware, developing the software library called "sysdolphin" for the GameCube. [9] [37]
On July 31, 2001, HAL Laboratory and Nintendo jointly established Warpstar, Inc., a company created to oversee Kirby merchandising and outside media, such as the Kirby: Right Back at Ya! anime series. [2] [38] In March 2002, Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi retired and named Iwata as his successor. [39] In 2003, the company moved from Nintendo's Tokyo Prefecture Building in Nihonbashi, Chuo to a new office in Kanda Sudacho, Chiyoda. [40] Sakurai also left HAL to become a freelance game designer, though he continued to work on the Super Smash Bros. series. [41] In 2007, HAL worked with Atlus to produce a Kirby-themed medal game for arcades. [42]
The company developed the internet browser and electronic instruction manual for both the Nintendo 3DS [43] [44] and Wii U. [45] [46] HAL released a Kirby-themed card game in 2015. [47] In August 2016, it teamed with Nintendo to open the Kirby Café chain in Japan. [48] [49] HAL helped to develop software for the Nintendo Switch, creating its internet browser, Mii photo library, and various game development environments and tools. [50] It also released a Kirby-themed board game in 2017. [51]
In 2017, HAL Laboratory announced that the company would start developing games for mobile devices under the brand name HAL Egg, in order to clearly differentiate them from the company's usual output. [52] The first title released under the brand name was Part Time UFO . [53] [54] The game was a premium title, as the developers at HAL did not want to implement the more exploitative types of monetization that had become common in the industry. [9] The company released miniature versions of the MZ-80C and PC-8001 computers in October 2017 and October 2019, respectively. [55] [56] A second mobile game, Housuu de Shoubu! Kame Sanpo was released in Japan in 2019. [57] [58]
In 2020, HAL relocated its office to Nintendo's new Tokyo building, alongside Nintendo EPD Tokyo, Nintendo PTD Tokyo, 1-Up Studio, and Game Freak. At this point, HAL had just under 200 employees. [59] In 2022, the company released Kirby and the Forgotten Land , the first fully 3D game in the series. [36]
In 2025, HAL sold its stake in Warpstar to Nintendo, with it subsequently rebranding to Nintendo Stars Inc., and expanded to include merchandising of film adaptations of Nintendo's properties. [60] [61]
