While a separate entity from HAL Laboratory, the two companies had some degree of collaboration: HAL Corporation licensed intellectual property from the other HAL to develop and publish the final game in the Eggerland series, Egger Land for Windows 95 / Fukkatsu! Egger Land. They were also listed as a designer of computer peripherals. On August 3, 1992, a related company known as HAL Corporation was founded as an independent video game publisher by Mikio Ikeda, the former and first president of HAL Laboratory. Sakurai resigned from HAL Laboratory in 2003 after criticizing Nintendo's handling of Kirby Air Ride's development, but continues to be involved with Nintendo through Sora Ltd. franchise, and now leads his own company, Sora Ltd. In Japanese pronunciation, "HAL" is "はる (haru)," and "春 (Spring)" is also pronounced "はる." "Spring" can also mean a physical tool, "バネ," so this logo was modeled on the physical tool, "Spring."Īn important figure of HAL Laboratory is Masahiro Sakurai, who created the Kirby character and the Super Smash Bros. At the time, HALKEN has two variations of its logo: one of them was the Spring mark. Some of its early titles were also released as HAL America, a North American subsidiary of the company. 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. HAL became even more closely tied to Nintendo in later years, and their sysdolphin game development software suite was provided by Nintendo to third-party GameCube developers. Nintendo then bought the company, ending HAL Laboratory's life as an independent publisher. Despite having a development of more than 4 years, having a 8 megabit cartridge (the largest at the time), and having advanced graphics, the game sold poorly, which led HAL Laboratory to bankruptcy. Despite being a defunct game series, HAL Laboratory continues to pay homage to Eggerland within the Kirby series through the characters Lololo & Lalala.īefore HAL Laboratory was bought by Nintendo, a game titled Metal Slader Glory was released for the Famicom in 1991. HAL later abandoned the Eggerland series in favor of Kirby, but it received two final entries on Game Boy and Windows PC that postdated the release of Kirby's Dream Land. The Eggerland series would eventually move onto the Famicom Disk System and then the standard Famicom, before it was brought to the NES for Western territories and renamed Adventures of Lolo. HAL's work on both games went officially uncredited by Nintendo, though the development team of Mach Rider was able to hide their names in its default high score listing, along with a reference to Eggerland. Using the same raster scrolling effect, it replaced the race car with a futuristic motorcycle, and added new gameplay elements like shooting enemies. In 1985, F1 Race was reworked into Mach Rider, which was made for both the NES and the Famicom. It was programmed in part by HAL member and future Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata. Their first title created for a Nintendo platform was F1 Race, a 1984 racing game for the Famicom that was published by Nintendo exclusively in Japan. Prior to the creation of Kirby, HAL Laboratory's leading video game franchises were the Eggerlandpuzzle-action game series, which made its debut with Eggerland Mystery on MSX in 1985, and the Hole in One golf simulation series. They were also known as a designer and manufacturer of computer peripherals, particularly trackball controllers. HAL Laboratory's first games were made in the early 1980s for the MSX, PC-88, and Sharp X1 home computers in Japan, and the VIC-20 and Commodore 64 in Western regions.
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