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HAL's president shares very kind words on Iwata, mentions an unreleased SNES game, and explains the company's logo

by rawmeatcowboy
30 July 2018
GN Version 5.0

The president of HAL Laboratory, Satoshi Mitsuhara, recently sat down for an interview with Forbes, and the feature contains all kinds of interesting tidbits. You can find the some snippets below, but make sure to click over and read the full piece.

On Satoru Iwata

Satoru Iwata was a very straight person. Never tried to cheat or have any kind of intent to do that at all. Even when other people were cheating or doing something underhand, he never used that as a reason to do likewise. At work, he was also a very serious and honest person, that sincerity and honesty made the company very pleasant. He also had a big capacity for things, he could take on a lot. We were very close friends.

One time, when we were extremely busy on MOTHER2 for Super Famicom we often went out together for dinner after work. On our way home from dinner, we used to go to the arcades and play Daytona USA exactly twice. Always twice and leave. I reckoned we did that every week. It was really like work hard and play hard.

On an unreleased SNES game

As soon as Ponkotsu Tank was finished, I moved onto another game. However, this was not the first Kirby game but an unpublished title. This was a Super Famicom or SNES game. Unfortunately, I cannot talk about this game though. I then worked Kirby’s Adventure for Famicom or NES after that.

On the company's logo

Our “Inutamago” logo, with “inu” meaning dog and “tamago” meaning egg, is quite symbolic because the dog is a mammal and doesn't lay eggs. However, it is looking after these eggs, that means you don't really know what is inside those eggs. That implies that whatever comes out of these eggs is completely unknown and utterly surprising. That's where the inspiration for the logo is from, in that HAL Laboratory is a company that will surprise people and creates something unimaginable.

[Link]