Originally a small group of friends who shared the desire to create games, HAL Labs has now grown to a respectable size. Among the small group who created HAL Labs was Saturo Iwata, the current president of Nintendo of Japan. HAL is now similar to Intelligent Systems in that they are a branch of Nintendo and create video games only for Nintendo.
HAL Labs is a game developer. Among their many great creations are the Kirby series, and the original Super Smash Bros.