HAL Laboratory was founded on February 21, 1980 in Kanda,
Chiyoda Ward, Tokyo. Mitsuhiro Ikeda served as the first president and CEO. 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. This included
Satoru Iwata and
Satoshi Matsuoka. HAL initially started out of an apartment in
Akihabara, developing hardware peripherals. An early investor was Iwasaki Giken, a company that programmed many of Nintendo's first video games. In its early years, it developed products like a universal remote, the HAL Fax, which allowed users to fax directly from a computer, and the HAL Catch, a cable that connected an
electronic organizer to a PC. the CAT trackball, and the Hibiki FM tone generator and MIDI interface board in 1986. while in a 2012
Iwata Asks interview, he said the company was named HAL because "each letter put [them]
one step ahead of
IBM." 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 Through its connection to Iwasaki Giken, HAL started its business relationship with
Nintendo in 1984. Between 1987 and 1991, HAL also published several NES titles, including
Stargate and
Kabuki: Quantum Fighter. Masahiro Sakurai joined the company in 1989. 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. This company continued to operate until around 2002. However, following the protracted development of
Metal Slader Glory, the company was $1.5 billion yen in debt and on the verge of bankruptcy. Nintendo offered to rescue HAL on the condition that Satoru Iwata were to be appointed its president. HAL then found success soon after, releasing ''
Kirby's Adventure, Kirby's Dream Course, and Mother 2
. The first game to use the logo was Super Smash Bros.'' and established an R&D center in Tokyo that year. and the company worked on three games that were ultimately cancelled. During this time, HAL also worked on Nintendo's hardware, developing the software library called "sysdolphin" for the
GameCube. 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. In March 2002, Nintendo president
Hiroshi Yamauchi retired and named Iwata as his successor. In 2003, the company moved from Nintendo's Tokyo Prefecture Building in
Nihonbashi,
Chuo to a new office in
Kanda Sudacho,
Chiyoda. Sakurai also left HAL to become a freelance game designer, though he continued to work on the Super Smash Bros. series. In 2007, HAL worked with
Atlus to produce a Kirby-themed
medal game for arcades. The company developed the internet browser and electronic instruction manual for both the
Nintendo 3DS and
Wii U. HAL released a Kirby-themed card game in 2015. In August 2016, it teamed with Nintendo to open the
Kirby Café chain in Japan. HAL helped to develop software for the Nintendo Switch, creating its internet browser,
Mii photo library, and various game development environments and tools. It also released a Kirby-themed board game in 2017. 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. The first title released under the brand name was
Part Time UFO. 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. A second mobile game,
Housuu de Shoubu! Kame Sanpo was released in Japan in 2019. 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. In 2022, the company released
Kirby and the Forgotten Land, the first fully 3D game in the series. ==Games==