HAL Laboratory: Difference between revisions

{{Infobox-Company

|industry=Video game development

|firstgame=''[[Kirby's Dream Land]]'' (1992)

|latestgame=''[[Kirby's Return to Dream Land Deluxe]]'' (2023)

|founded=21 February 1980

|president=[[Shigefumi Kawase]]

}}

==History==

[[File:MSX Magazine 0 Iwata Ikeda photo.jpg|left|thumb|200px|Satoru Iwata (left) and Mikio Ikeda, photographed for issue 0 of ''MSX Magazine''. After HAL Laboratory spun off its non-Nintendo business into HAL Corporation, Iwata and Ikeda would head the two separated entities.]]

===1980-1992, before ''Kirby''===

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"/> Contemporary accounts of HAL Laboratory's ''de facto'' bankruptcy from magazines like ''Asahi Pasocom'' and ''Credit & Law'' do not blame a single point of failure like ''Glory'', noting a general lack of hits and sales numbers that were consistently below expectations. These accounts point out that such modest sales hurt the company at a time when it was pursuing a number of expansive ventures, such as an American subsidiary in Oregon, and 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''===

It was against this background of financial difficulty and management conflicts that Sakurai was developing a beginner-friendly platforming game called ''[[Twinkle☆Popo]]''. Seeing the appeal of the game, Shigeru Miyamoto offered for Nintendo to market and publish the game once it was reborn as ''Kirby's Dream Land''.<ref>{{cite person|quote=あのタイトルでゲームボーイのソフトとして出す予定でしたが、「もったいない」と宮本茂さんがおっしゃって、調整して、任天堂発売の『星のカービィ』に変わるんですね。" Translation: "We were going to release it under that title, but then Shigeru Miyamoto-san said 'mottainai' ''['it would be a shame', or even 'what a waste' in its most direct use]'', so we tuned it up and changed it into the Nintendo-published Kirby of the Stars ''[''Kirby's Dream Land'']''.|name=[[Satoru Iwata]]|url=https://www.1101.com/president/iwata07.html|title=ほぼ日刊イトイ新聞 - 社長に学べ！}}</ref> Beyond ''Kirby'', while the company formally entered bankruptcy and composition proceedings in June of 1992 with approximately ¥5 billion in liabilities,<ref>[https://archive.org/details/game-machine-magazine-19920801p/page/n2/mode/1up Game Machine Magazine (1992-08-01)], page 4 ([https://ia801609.us.archive.org/view_archive.php?archive=/7/items/game-machine-magazine-19920801p/19920801p_jp2.zip&file=19920801p_jp2%2F19920801p_0002.jp2 direct image link])</ref> Nintendo would help HAL Laboratory rebuild on the condition that Iwata be appointed as President of HAL Laboratory.<ref>{{cite person|quote=岩田さんは、いまはHAL研究所の社長だが、もともとは、ひとりのバイトの学生だったらしい。どうして社長になったのかといえば、倒産寸前でニュースにまでとりあげられたこの会社に、「岩田が社長をやるなら助ける」という、援助者が現れたからだ。" ''Translation:'' "Iwata-san is now President of HAL Laboratory, but originally he was just a student working as a part-time employee. How did he become president? Because with the company in the news on the verge of bankruptcy, a benefactor ''[who could only have been Nintendo under Hiroshi Yamauchi's leadership, given historical context]'' appeared and said 'if Iwata will agree to be President, then we will help you'.|name=Shigesato Itoi|url=https://www.1101.com/itoi/1999-01-23.html|title=ほぼ日刊イトイ新聞-糸井重里の脱線WEB革命}}</ref><ref name="shmuplations_iwata"/> Having started HAL's relationship with Nintendo a decade prior, Iwata officially took the position of President of HAL Laboratory with Nintendo's backing in 1993, with HAL promising to pay back ¥1.5 billion in debt over six years.<ref name="hobonichi_iwata_15oku">{{cite person|quote=会社が広い意味で倒産して、借金からはじまるわけです。そのときの負債総額は、何十億円もありまして。【中略】結果的には十五億円を六年間で返すことになりました。|name=[[Satoru Iwata]]|url=https://www.1101.com/president/iwata-index.html|title=ほぼ日刊イトイ新聞 - 社長に学べ！}}</ref><ref>[https://www.1101.com/about_iwatasan/yanase/2020-07-14.html Professor Hiroichi Yanase's profile of Satoru Iwata based on the Hobonichi book ''Iwata-San'', part 4 of 5]</ref> Iwata's leadership and Nintendo's investment (including into the sales and marketing of HAL's games) would see HAL Laboratory focus on breaking the vicious cycle that led to the company's financial hardship.<ref name="shmuplations_iwata">Interview with Satoru Iwata in [https://retrocdn.net/images/3/33/UsedGames_JP_12.pdf ''Used Games'' magazine, volume 12 (1999 autumn)] ([https://shmuplations.com/iwata/ shmuplations.com translation])</ref>

==Logo==

[[File:HAL Laboratory historical logos artwork.png|right|thumb|250px|Three of HAL Laboratory's logos: ''(left to right)'' the original logo, the "spring" logo, and the Dream Hatcher used today.]]

==Video game series produced by HAL==

[[File:HAL Laboratory 1986.jpg|thumb|300px|The HALNOTE development team in 1986: Satoru Iwata, Mr. Suzuki, Mr. Kaneda and Mr. Seki.]]

===Presidents===

*Mitsuhiro Ikeda (February 1980–March 1984)

*Tsuyoshi Ikeda (March 1984–March 1993)

There are several references to HAL's other works within the ''Kirby'' series. For example, [[Lololo & Lalala]] come from the ''Eggerland'' series (where they are named Lolo and Lala), and [[Moto Shotzo]] is based on the main character of the game ''Trax''. The [[Kirby Quest]] mode in ''Kirby Mass Attack'' references ''Arcana'', which was Kirby's technical debut as a character; he cameos in the opening sequence. [[Qbby]] from the [[nwiki:BoxBoy! series|''BOXBOY!'' series]] has also made several cameo appearances in the ''Kirby'' series, and [[List of references to the Kirby series#BoxBoy! series|vice-versa]]. Symbols of HAL often appear in the [[Stone]] ability's transformations, such as the Dream Hatcher and HAL's Yamanashi headquarters.

==Gallery==