| HAL Laboratory |
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HAL Laboratory's logo since 1998 |
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| Founded: | February 21, 1980 |
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| Founder: | Mitsuhiro Ikeda |
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| President: | Shigefumi Kawase |
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| Parent / owner: | N/A |
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| Divisions / subsidiaries: | Warpstar Inc. (50%), HAL America, HAL Egg |
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HAL Laboratory, Inc. (株式会社ハル研究所Kabushiki gaisha Haru Kenkyūjo) is a development studio partnered and closely affiliated withNintendo. For many of their projects they in the early to mid-1990's the company went under the nameHALKEN, and published many of their early titles through HAL America. The name "HAL" was at first thought to be derived fromHAL 9000, the AI villain of the2001 A Space Odyssey film, as stated bySatoru Iwata himself[1], though he later stated that the name was actually decided upon because "each letter put us one step ahead ofIBM"[2]. The HAL logo is a dog incubating a group of eggs; according to president Masayoshi Tanimura, the logo represents the thought put into "completely new ideas that eventually hatch into incredibly fun games."[3]
HAL was founded by a group of friends in 1980 that simply wanted to develop games. The group started off creating titles for theMSX andCommodore VIC-20[4] and later started developing exclusively for Nintendo. Satoru Iwata was made president of the company in 1993 until 2000, when he became CEO of Nintendo. Masayoshi Tanimura was later promoted to president of HAL.
HAL is most well known as being the developer for theKirby series, created by ex-employeeMasahiro Sakurai. While under HAL Sakurai also began theSuper Smash Bros. series. HAL has also helped in developing theEarthBound / Mother series.
In August of 2017, HAL announced the opening of a new subsidiary named HAL Egg, which will focus on the development of smartphone titles.[5]
Games published by Nintendo
Logos
External links
HAL Laboratory on other NIWA Wikis: |
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References
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| Key employees | | Presidents | |
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| Managers, etc. | Internal | |
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| Subsidiaries | - NNSD: Yusuke Beppu
- Monolith Soft: Hirohide Sugiura, Tetsuya Takahashi
- 1-Up Studio: Gen Kadoi
- ND Cube: Hidetoshi Endo
- Retro: Michael Kelbaugh
- NERD: Alexandre Delattre
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