HAL Laboratory, Inc.
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HAL Laboratory, Inc. is a Japanese video game developer. 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 protagonist of the eponymous game series.
Though they started off making games for the MSX system during the early '80s, all of their games since the 1986 Famicom Disk System game Gall Force (based on the anime series of the same name) have been released strictly on Nintendo systems. Later on, their games were also published by Nintendo, and they have gone on to become one of the larger second-party developers for Nintendo.
In many of their games during the early to mid-90's they used the name HALKEN as well as HAL Laboratory.
Games developed
- HAL is responsible for the Kirby series.
- Super Smash Bros., a Nintendo 64 and GameCube fighting game series starring many of Nintendo's most known characters, was designed by HAL Laboratories.
- HAL also created the Adventures of Lolo/Eggerland series, which is regarded by many gamers as one of the greatest puzzle series ever. The player plays as Lolo, a small, blue, ball-like creature who has to go through many rooms and solve many puzzles to save his love, a small, pink, ball-like creature called Lala. Lolo and Lala often appeared in Kirby games as bosses.
- The company helped develop EarthBound, credited as HALKEN.
- Air Fortress
- Alcahest, an RPG published by Squaresoft only in Japan.
- Arcana, a card-based RPG.
- New Ghostbusters 2, based on the Ghostbusters 2 movie and released for the NES and Game Boy. It was released only in Japan and Europe. It is unrelated to Activision's Ghostbusters 2.
- HAL also co-developed in the Super NES port of SimCity 2000. It would the last game developed by HAL without Nintendo's intervention.
External links
- HAL Laboratory, Inc (http://www.hallab.co.jp/) (Japanese)de:HAL Laboratories