HAL Laboratory

HAL Laboratory, Inc. is a subsidiary of Nintendo that is well-known for creating and developing the Kirby and Super Smash Bros. series of video games. They are also known to help develop the EarthBound series, Mother 2 onward. The company's name comes from the HAL 9000 computer from the movie, 2001: A Space Odyssey.
HAL Laboratory started off making games for the MSX system and the Commodore VIC-20. 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 KENkyūjo", 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.
Category:Companies