The Story Behind HAL Laboratory’s Name Finally Disclosed

Nintendo has just published a brand new Iwata Asks, and as expected, its chock full of delightful, unexpected information. The latest installment has the president of Nintendo talking shop with men behind Zombi U, arguable the mostly successful third party effort for Nintendo's new console thus far.

Though one interesting aside, which Destructoid also noticed, has nothing to do with that recent title. Instead, it concerns the meaning behind the name of Nintendo second party developer HAL Laboratory, the firm that gave the world Kirby and Super Smash Bros.

One naturally assumes that it's named after the super computer from Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. But not so. According to Satoru Iwata:

"Ubisoft was named after Ubiquity because you wanted to be everywhere in the world and HAL was named as such because each letter put us one step ahead of IBM! (Laughs)"

As Destructoid also notes, when you take each letter before IBM in sequential order, you get HAL. Was Iwata trolling the technology giant? Well, it certainly looks that way, doesn't it?