Konami
More info
- Creator
- Kagemasa Kōzuki
- Released
- 1969
- Type
- Game developer, publisher
A Japanese game company that started with jukeboxes, gave the world the Konami Code and Metal Gear, and now earns much of its money from pachinko.
Kagemasa Kōzuki founded Konami in Osaka in 1969 to rent out and repair jukeboxes; the name is said to come from the founders' surnames. In the 1980s it became big in arcades and on the MSX, where its cartridges carried their own sound chip, the SCC. Programmer Kazuhisa Hashimoto added the cheat ↑↑↓↓←→←→BA to Gradius so he could beat his own game; by way of Contra it became the best-known Easter egg in gaming history.
Hideo Kojima's Metal Gear (1987, MSX2) invented the stealth genre. Kojima's departure in 2015 was public and bitter, and Konami then put its weight behind pachinko, gyms and mobile games until remakes of its old classics became profitable again.