Super Smash Bros. series

HAL Laboratory

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HAL Laboratory, Inc.
Taken from Wikipedia. Transparency added.
Type Private
Founded February 21, 1980[1]
Key people Satoru Iwata (former president), Masahiro Sakurai (former employee)
Industry Video game industry
Products Video games
Employees 110
Website http://www.hallab.co.jp/

HAL Laboratory, Inc. (株式会社ハル研究所, Kabushikigaisha Haru Kenkyūjo) is a Japanese video game company that was founded on February 21, 1980. The company is most famous for creating the Kirby series, as well as the Super Smash Bros. series. HAL Laboratory is a subsidiary of Nintendo and was acquired by the company when one of their former employees, Satoru Iwata became president of Nintendo.

History

HAL Laboratory was originally a group of friends who shared a desire to create video games, and started off making games for the MSX system and the Commodore 64, until Nintendo released their NES in 1983.[2]

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

Iwata was president of HAL Laboratory before he become president of Nintendo. Masahiro Sakurai, who created the character Kirby and the Super Smash Bros. series, also worked at HAL, and now leads his own company, Sora Ltd.

HAL Laboratory-developed properties represented in Smash include the Kirby and EarthBound series, as well as the Nintendo-console SimCity games. HAL also developed several Pokémon spinoffs, such as the Pokémon Stadium games, which are referenced in Smash.

Trivia

  • Often believed to be derived from the HAL 9000 computer in the novel and film 2001: A Space Odyssey, an interview with Iwata reveals its names is a pun of the IBM comapny, Iwata joking each letter puts them a step ahead of IBM. The joke is because the letters H, A and L (used in HAL) come before the letters I, B and M (used in IBM, respectively.[3].

External links

References