HAL Laboratory, Inc. (株式会社ハル研究所, Kabushikigaisha Haru Kenkyūjo?) is a Japanese video game developer that was founded on February 21, 1980. It is headquartered in Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo. Its name comes from the HAL 9000 computer in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey. The company is most famous for its character Kirby, the eponymous protagonist of the series of games, as well as the Super Smash Bros. series.
HAL Laboratory started off making games for the MSX system and the Commodore VIC-20.
In many of its games during the early to mid-1990s 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.
Famous quotes containing the word laboratory:
“For a novelist, a given historic situation is an anthropologic laboratory in which he explores his basic question: What is human existence?”
—Milan Kundera (b. 1929)