Konami

Overview

Konami began in 1969 as a jukebox rental and repair business in Osaka, Japan. By the early 1980s, they had pivoted to arcade games and never looked back. Their output—Frogger, Scramble, Gradius, Castlevania, Contra, Metal Gear—defined genres and spawned gaming’s most recognisable secret code.

Fast facts

• Founded: 1969 in Osaka by Kagemasa Kozuki.
• Name origin: disputed, but possibly derived from the founders’ names.
• Arcade breakthrough: Scramble (1981) pioneered the side-scrolling shooter; Frogger (1981) became a cultural phenomenon.
• Console dominance: NES-era classics like Castlevania (1986) and Contra (1987) cemented their reputation.
• The Code: ↑↑↓↓←→←→BA—first used in Gradius (1986), immortalised in Contra for granting 30 lives.

The Konami Code

Programmer Kazuhisa Hashimoto added the code to the NES port of Gradius because he found the game too difficult to test. It was never removed. When Contra shipped with the same code granting 30 extra lives, players spread the secret through playgrounds and magazines. The sequence has since appeared in hundreds of games, websites, and even Netflix.

Home computer ports

Konami’s arcade hits were ported extensively to home platforms:

• Frogger: Parker Brothers handled the C64 and Atari versions; other publishers covered the Spectrum and Amstrad.
• Nemesis/Gradius: Spectrum and Amstrad ports captured the side-scrolling shooter formula.
• Licensed vs. in-house: quality varied wildly depending on who handled the conversion.

Why it mattered

• Genre definition: Scramble and Gradius established the scrolling shooter template. Castlevania refined action-platformers. Metal Gear pioneered stealth.
• Cross-platform reach: Konami’s games appeared on nearly every system of the 80s and 90s, from arcade cabinets to home computers to consoles.
• Cultural impact: the Konami Code transcended gaming, becoming a symbol of hidden secrets and insider knowledge.

See also

• Frogger
• Nintendo Entertainment System
• Commodore 64