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In his second year of employment with the company, Iwata heard about an upcoming console from Nintendo called the Family Computer (or Famicom, later re-fashioned as the [[Nintendo Entertainment System]] in overseas markets). This prompted Iwata to visit Kyoto to ask Nintendo to allow him and HAL to develop software for the Famicom.<ref name="iwata_gccx">[https://archive.org/details/satoru-iwata-game-center-cx-balloon-fight-3qdrzxmgywo Satoru Iwata's appearance on the 17th Nintendo Channel special episode of Game Center CX, featuring ''Balloon Fight'']</ref><ref name="shmuplations_iwata"/> While Iwata had never tried and only believed he could program games for the Famicom, this belief was far from baseless, as the Famicom shared its CPU architecture with the legendary [[wikipedia:MOS Technology 6502|6502]] CPU at the heart of the Commodore 8-bit computers on which Iwata had cut his teeth. HAL's first projects for Nintendo came in 1983, when they were tapped to port four Atari 2600 games to the Famicom as launch titles for a planned Atari-distributed international version of the system; three of them – ''Defender II'', ''Joust'', and ''Millipede'' – were eventually released in 1987 in Japan and 1988 in North America.<ref>[https://tcrf.net/Defender_II_(NES) Defender II (NES)]. ''The Cutting Room Floor''. Retrieved December 9, 2023.</ref><ref>[https://tcrf.net/Millipede_(NES,_HAL_Laboratory) Millipede (NES, HAL Laboratory)]. ''The Cutting Room Floor''. Retrieved December 9, 2023.</ref><ref>[https://tcrf.net/Joust_(NES) Joust (NES)]. ''The Cutting Room Floor''. Retrieved December 9, 2023.</ref> Though the deal between Atari and Nintendo collapsed following the North American video game industry crash, resulting in Nintendo handling international distribution themselves in 1985,<ref>Turner, Benjamin; Nutt, Christian. [https://web.archive.org/web/20040701101711/http://archive.gamespy.com/articles/july03/famicom/index11.shtml How the NES revived an industry and captivated a generation.] ''GameSpy''. Archived July 1, 2004. Retrieved December 9, 2023.</ref> HAL would maintain a close working relationship with Nintendo, and would become a regular developer for their hardware from 1984 onward, collaborating on ''[[wikipedia:Pinball (1984 video game)|NES Pinball]]''<ref>[https://www.nsidr.com/archive/hal-laboratory-company-profile/page/2/ HAL Laboratory: Company Profile - nsidr]</ref> and porting its ''Eggerland'' games to their consoles along with original titles such as ''Revenge of the 'Gator'' and ''New Ghostbusters II''. | In his second year of employment with the company, Iwata heard about an upcoming console from Nintendo called the Family Computer (or Famicom, later re-fashioned as the [[Nintendo Entertainment System]] in overseas markets). This prompted Iwata to visit Kyoto to ask Nintendo to allow him and HAL to develop software for the Famicom.<ref name="iwata_gccx">[https://archive.org/details/satoru-iwata-game-center-cx-balloon-fight-3qdrzxmgywo Satoru Iwata's appearance on the 17th Nintendo Channel special episode of Game Center CX, featuring ''Balloon Fight'']</ref><ref name="shmuplations_iwata"/> While Iwata had never tried and only believed he could program games for the Famicom, this belief was far from baseless, as the Famicom shared its CPU architecture with the legendary [[wikipedia:MOS Technology 6502|6502]] CPU at the heart of the Commodore 8-bit computers on which Iwata had cut his teeth. HAL's first projects for Nintendo came in 1983, when they were tapped to port four Atari 2600 games to the Famicom as launch titles for a planned Atari-distributed international version of the system; three of them – ''Defender II'', ''Joust'', and ''Millipede'' – were eventually released in 1987 in Japan and 1988 in North America.<ref>[https://tcrf.net/Defender_II_(NES) Defender II (NES)]. ''The Cutting Room Floor''. Retrieved December 9, 2023.</ref><ref>[https://tcrf.net/Millipede_(NES,_HAL_Laboratory) Millipede (NES, HAL Laboratory)]. ''The Cutting Room Floor''. Retrieved December 9, 2023.</ref><ref>[https://tcrf.net/Joust_(NES) Joust (NES)]. ''The Cutting Room Floor''. Retrieved December 9, 2023.</ref> Though the deal between Atari and Nintendo collapsed following the North American video game industry crash, resulting in Nintendo handling international distribution themselves in 1985,<ref>Turner, Benjamin; Nutt, Christian. [https://web.archive.org/web/20040701101711/http://archive.gamespy.com/articles/july03/famicom/index11.shtml How the NES revived an industry and captivated a generation.] ''GameSpy''. Archived July 1, 2004. Retrieved December 9, 2023.</ref> HAL would maintain a close working relationship with Nintendo, and would become a regular developer for their hardware from 1984 onward, collaborating on ''[[wikipedia:Pinball (1984 video game)|NES Pinball]]''<ref>[https://www.nsidr.com/archive/hal-laboratory-company-profile/page/2/ HAL Laboratory: Company Profile - nsidr]</ref> and porting its ''Eggerland'' games to their consoles along with original titles such as ''Revenge of the 'Gator'' and ''New Ghostbusters II''. | ||
However, the company was on the verge of bankruptcy by 1992, a typical victim of the [[wikipedia:Japanese asset price bubble|disastrous aftermath of the Japanese asset price bubble]] (an event so singular that Japanese media simply refer to it as [[wikipedia:ja:バブル崩壊|バブル崩壊]] or "''the bubble collapse''"). Retrospective accounts of this period of hardship ascribe a near-mythical quality to ''[[wikipedia:Metal Slader Glory|Metal Slader Glory]]'', a costly and elaborate adventure game that took somewhere between four and six years to develop.<ref name="shmuplations_msg">[https://shmuplations.com/metalsladerglory/ Metal Slader Glory – Developer Interview Collection], Peter Barnard's translation of two interviews with ''Metal Slader Glory'' director Yoshimiru Hoshi</ref><ref name="hobonichi_sakurai">[https://www.1101.com/about_iwatasan/sakurai/2020-01-30.html Shigesato Itoi's interview with Masahiro Sakurai about Satoru Iwata]</ref> The early days of this long development cycle happened to coincide with the heights of the bubble boom while the game would only be finished in time to release as the bubble was about to burst. Although the game's director would claim that the game was successful enough for the initial (and only) production run to quickly sell out,<ref name="shmuplations_msg"/> ''Glory'' was a focal point for HAL Laboratory's internal disarray, with Masahiro Sakurai recalling overhearing a furious Iwata in management discussions about how the company could possibly recoup ''Glory'''s development costs.<ref name="hobonichi_sakurai"/> While Iwata would later describe ''Glory'' as a mistake (「間違い」) strictly from a management perspective, he also recalled a larger vicious cycle at HAL Laboratory of pushing unsatisfactory games to release to recoup development costs, only for this to result in poor reception and sales that put further pressure on subsequent games to recoup costs.<ref name="shmuplations_iwata"/> | However, the company was on the verge of bankruptcy by 1992, a typical victim of the [[wikipedia:Japanese asset price bubble|disastrous aftermath of the Japanese asset price bubble]] (an event so singular that Japanese media simply refer to it as [[wikipedia:ja:バブル崩壊|バブル崩壊]] or "''the bubble collapse''"). Retrospective accounts of this period of hardship ascribe a near-mythical quality to ''[[wikipedia:Metal Slader Glory|Metal Slader Glory]]'', a costly and elaborate adventure game that took somewhere between four and six years to develop.<ref name="shmuplations_msg">[https://shmuplations.com/metalsladerglory/ Metal Slader Glory – Developer Interview Collection], Peter Barnard's translation of two interviews with ''Metal Slader Glory'' director Yoshimiru Hoshi</ref><ref name="hobonichi_sakurai">[https://www.1101.com/about_iwatasan/sakurai/2020-01-30.html Shigesato Itoi's interview with Masahiro Sakurai about Satoru Iwata]</ref> The early days of this long development cycle happened to coincide with the heights of the bubble boom while the game would only be finished in time to release as the bubble was about to burst. Although the game's director would claim that the game was successful enough for the initial (and only) production run to quickly sell out,<ref name="shmuplations_msg"/> ''Glory'' was a focal point for HAL Laboratory's internal disarray, with Masahiro Sakurai recalling overhearing a furious Iwata in management discussions about how the company could possibly recoup ''Glory'''s development costs.<ref name="hobonichi_sakurai"/> While Iwata would later describe ''Glory'' as a mistake (「間違い」) strictly from a management perspective, he also recalled a larger vicious cycle at HAL Laboratory of pushing unsatisfactory games to release to recoup development costs, only for this to result in poor reception and sales that put further pressure on subsequent games to recoup costs.<ref name="shmuplations_iwata"/> Indeed, contemporary accounts of HAL Laboratory's ''de facto'' bankruptcy from magazines like ''Asahi Pasocom'' and ''Credit & Law'' did not blame a single point of failure like ''Glory''. Rather, these accounts highlighted the expansive ventures that HAL had been pursuing, such as an American subsidiary in Oregon, as well as a recently constructed development center in Yamanashi that had cost around ¥1.1 billion to build.<ref>[https://twitter.com/camelletgo/status/973186351431524354 Twitter thread with scans from the August 1992 issues of ''Asahi Pasocom'' and ''Credit & Law'' magazines] (direct image links for [https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DYFzWmgVAAERZqu?format=jpg&name=large ''Asahi Pasocom'' article] and [https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DYF1TuoVoAA-Zpb?format=jpg&name=large ''Credit & Law'']; [http://web.archive.org/web/20230518202755/https://twitter.com/camelletgo/status/973186351431524354/ Wayback Machine snapshot of Twitter thread])</ref> | ||
===1992-present, with ''Kirby''=== | ===1992-present, with ''Kirby''=== | ||
