Whip up a last-minute cake and bring out the candles because we have a big birthday on our hands, folks. HAL Laboratory, the company behind Kirby, the OG Smash Bros., EarthBound and another boatload of beauties that we’ll get to in just a moment, has turned 45 today.
Yep, on 21st February 1980, Mitsuhiro Ikeda founded HAL with the intention of developing games for home computers. Four years later, Nintendo released a little system called the Famicom, ushering in a new partnership that we’re still reaping the rewards of to this day.
After one illustrious HAL programmer called Satoru Iwata helped out Nintendo with a handful of NES hits including Pinball, Golf, Balloon Fight, a young upstart by the name of Masahiro Sakurai joined the company and released his debut game: Kirby’s Dream Land. This was the introduction to our beloved pink puffball (white at the time, let’s not forget) and the birth of the company’s figurehead going forward.
With almost 40 games and enough merchandise to make even the Minions envious, Kirby has undoubtedly stepped into the role of the studio’s most recognisable face, and yet, the last 45 years of releases have been far from a one-note Kirb-fest.
We’ve already mentioned Nintendo’s most recognisable brawler and the RPG that time forgot (we remember you, Earthbound), but HAL has been behind a whole host of strange, bold swings that are easy to overlook once you lock eyes with the pink ball at the top of the pyramid.
In 1999, Pokémon Snap and Pokémon Pinball took the series’ usual catchin’ and battlin’ in a brave new direction, BOXBOY! is one of the most interesting puzzle platformer series of recent years, and who can forget the delightful Part Time UFO? which has been a staple of quick-fix fun ever since it landed on Switch back in 2020.
It’s easy to forget that HAL isn’t Nintendo, but its IPs have become so synonymous with the House of Mario over the years that we struggle to picture them not working hand-in-hand.
All in all, it has been quite the 45 in the biz. HAL’s general director of the Kirby series (quite the job title, we must admit), Shinya Kumazaki, took to social media to celebrate the anniversary, thanking fans for their continued support and sharing a commemorative painting that was issued to celebrate the studio’s 40th:
Despite 45 years of big-hitters, however, it has been a quiet couple of months for HAL. The studio’s last release came in the shape of Kirby’s Return to Dream Land Deluxe back in 2023, which, when you consider the usual cadence of Kirby releases, has been quite the wait. We can only assume that it’s full-steam ahead on Switch 2 behind closed doors, but the Planet Robobot Switch rumours continue to rumble away nonetheless.
Whether the next time we see HAL comes with a new Kirby, a remaster, or that beloved next Earthbound entry that we all so desperately want, we know the studio is never that far away when new Nintendo hardware is on the horizon.
So, happy birthday, HAL! Here’s to the next 45.
