HAL Laboratory: Difference between revisions

In 1978, the Seibu Department Stores flagship location in Ikebukuro, Tokyo, opened the first personal computer display corner in Japan; this acted as a focal point for a group of computer enthusiasts who became friends and ultimately started HAL Laboratory in 1980,<ref name="shmuplations_iwata"/> developing peripherals and games for personal computers and creating modest hits such as the ''[[wikipedia:Eggerland (series)|Eggerland]]'' series for the MSX. Iwata in retrospect has given two differing accounts of the reason behind the company's name. In his 2005 GDC keynote, he suggested the name derives from [[wikipedia:HAL 9000|HAL 9000]],<ref>{{cite person|quote=We worked until midnight or later every night, and that group of friends is what became the company known as HAL today. The name came from the computer in the movie 2001: Space Odyssey.{{sic|Iwata's original quote omits the indefinite article from the title of the film.}}|name=[[Satoru Iwata]]|url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9HUMt2rrOI&t=4m27s|title=GDC 2005 keynote}} ([https://www.ign.com/articles/2005/03/11/gdc-2005-iwata-keynote-transcript IGN transcript] and [http://web.archive.org/web/1000/https://www.ign.com/articles/2005/03/11/gdc-2005-iwata-keynote-transcript Wayback Machine snapshot of transcript])</ref> the sentient computer featuring throughout the [[wikipedia:Space Odyssey|''Space Odyssey'' series]] of science-fiction works. However, Iwata later claimed in a 2012 interview with ZombiU developers at Ubisoft that "HAL was named as such because each letter put us one step ahead of IBM!"<ref>[https://iwataasks.nintendo.com/interviews/wiiu/zombiu/0/1/ Iwata Asks: ZombiU] ([http://web.archive.org/web/20220826090845/https://iwataasks.nintendo.com/interviews/wiiu/zombiu/0/1/ Wayback Machine archive]). Note also that the creators of ''2001: A Space Odyssey'' had to explicitly deny that [[wikipedia:HAL 9000#Origin of name|HAL 9000's name]] derived from shifting the letters of IBM. The denial is perfectly sensible, given that IBM provided technical advice for the computer and were prominently featured elsewhere in the film version (see [http://web.archive.org/web/20130104205638mp_/http://www.lettersofnote.com/2013/01/does-ibm-know-that-hal-is-psychotic.html], [http://web.archive.org/web/20191218223724/https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2018/04/learning-about-the-future-from-2001-a-space-odyssey-fifty-years-later/]), and neither director Stanley Kubrick nor writer Arthur C Clarke would have wished to embarrass IBM. On the other hand, it would have been equally perfectly sensible for HAL Laboratory to be named (either partly, along with another namesake in HAL 9000, or entirely) based on a one-letter shift from IBM, the very same shift denied as the derivation for HAL 9000's name. HAL Laboratory never developed for the IBM PC or had any significant connection to IBM, mostly developing for Commodore or Japanese personal computers.</ref>

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>