Company Bio

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HAL Laboratory

Tokyo, Japan based Nintendo second-party developer, best known for programming titles in the popular Kirby franchise. The company was founded on February 2, 1980. Hal's first title was the game Girl Force (1986) for Nintendo's Japan-only Famicom Disk System. The company went on to publish, develop and co-develop (with Nintendo's internal EAD team) a variety of titles for NES (Famicom) Super NES (Super Famicom), Game Boy and Nintendo 64, including Ghost Busters 2 (1990), Hyper Zone (1991), Kirby GB (1992), Super Dunkshot (1992), Mother 2 (Earthbound) (1994), and many more.

HAL is known for simple, but addictive gameplay as evident in its more recent hits like Pokemon Snap (1999), Super Smash Bros. (1999) and Shigesato Itoi's Bass Fishing (2000).

HAL Laboratory, Inc. is not to be confused with HAL Corporation.

Latest Headlines

Kirby's Dream Land 3 Hits Virtual Console (Jan 05, 2009)

WiiWare title Sandy Beach and Virtual Console title Kirby's Dream Land 3 go live.

Kirby Squeak Squad (Dec 11, 2006)

Think pink! Nintendo's adorable little puffball... thing... has broken the curse and returned to his platforming roots.

Pok¿mon Ranger (Nov 06, 2006)

Nintendo unleashes yet another new Pok¿mon game, although you do more wrangling than battling this time around.

Games in Development

EarthBound (Wii-u)

Genre: RPG
US Release Date: TBA 2013
Role: Developer

Card Master (SNES)

Genre: RPG
UK Release Date: Unreleased
Role: Developer

Games Developed

Games Published

2008

Adventures of Lolo 2 (Wii)

2007

Adventures of Lolo (Wii)

1992

Day Dreamin' Davey (NES), Arcana (SNES), Hyper Zone (SNES)

1991

Hole in One (SNES)

1989

Air Fortress (NES)

1987

Joust (NES), Millipede (NES)

Games Canceled