Game

The Famicom Failure That Almost Bankrupted HAL, But Shaped Nintendo’s Future


Nintendo Famicom
Image: Damien McFerran / Nintendo Life

Unless you’re a dedicated Famicom collector, it’s unlikely that you’ve heard of Metal Slader Glory. Released right at the tail end of the Famicom’s life in 1991, the year after the release of the Super Famicom, Metal Slader Glory never made it out of Japan, and it proved to be a massive flop for HAL Laboratory. But the very magnitude of its failure helps to explain the close relationship that exists between Nintendo and HAL today, with the latter producing games like the first two Super Smash Bros. entries and the Kirby series exclusively for Nintendo consoles.

“It’s famous for being one of the most expensive Famicom games of its time,” said Satoru Iwata of Metal Slader Glory in a 1999 interview with Used Games magazine (translated by Shmuplations). Iwata, who became president of HAL in 1993 and then president of Nintendo in 2002, worked as a producer on the game, which took four years to finish in a time when game development was often measured in months, not years. “It’s actually kind of amazing that we stuck to it, persevered, and eventually released it,” he continued, “but from a management perspective it was a mistake.”

Before we get into Metal Slader Glory and its legacy, let’s do a quick recap of the history of HAL Laboratory. Formed in 1980, HAL initially created games for computers like the MSX and Commodore VIC-20, and the first president was Mitsuhiro Ikeda, who had previously managed a Seibu computer store visited by Iwata and his friends.

“The gang of us that used the computers at the store spontaneously formed a user group,” Iwata recalled in the book Ask Iwata, and when HAL was formed, he landed a part-time job with the company. Iwata was still at university in 1980, but when he graduated in 1982, he immediately began working full-time at HAL. (The name, incidentally, was chosen because “each letter put us one step ahead of IBM,” explained Iwata in 2012.)

A year later, the Nintendo Famicom was released, which changed HAL’s focus. “The Famicom gave us a totally new platform, changing forever the way that games would be made,” recalled Iwata [Ask Iwata, p. 7]. “At the time, a PC in Japan would cost you a small fortune, but the Famicom was only 15,000 yen, making it the obvious choice as a platform for playing games.”

HAL produced a slew of successful titles for the Famicom, including PINBALL, Golf, F1 Race, Balloon Fight, and Joust, and HAL even began publishing Famicom titles made by other developers, such as Kabuki: Quantum Fighter from Human Entertainment. Iwata had a direct hand in programming several of HAL’s Famicom hits, but he was soon promoted to head of development and took on a more managerial role.

It was as director of development that he noticed some exceptional pixel art being produced by Yoshimiru Hoshi (who goes by the name of ☆Yoshimiru, or simply Yoshimiru). He had been working as a freelancer for HAL, creating art and animation for games like Gall Force and Fire Bam, but in 1987 he was putting together a pitch for what would become Metal Slader Glory. He recalled the moment it was given the green light in another interview translated by Shmuplations:

“When I was getting ready to present the game… well, I suppose you couldn’t really call it a presentation. It was an attempt at a design doc, a screen mock-up and a couple of example animations. But, while I was waiting to show what I’d made, I was testing it on the monitor and Iwata happened to walk past. He saw the graphics, and the game was given the go-ahead without the presentation.”

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