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Widely reported, "Konami Code" creator, Kazuhisa Hashimoto, has passed away.
From Rolling Stone's article:
Kazuhisa Hashimoto, the producer credited with creating the most famous and memorized cheat in video game history, has died at the age of 61.
Video game maker Konami confirmed the death of Hashimoto, who entered the "Konami Code" command – "Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A, start" – into both the video game and pop culture lexicon.
"We are saddened to hear about the passing of Kazuhisa Hashimoto, a deeply talented producer who first introduced the world to the 'Konami Code,'" Konami tweeted Wednesday. "Our thoughts are with Hashimoto-san's family and friends at this time. Rest In Peace."
Created by Hashimoto as a backdoor to assist testers on Konami's exceedingly difficult 1985 arcade game Gradius — "I hadn't played that much and obviously couldn't beat it myself, so I put in the Konami code," he said of Gradius in a 2003 interview, "because I was the one who was going to be using it, I made sure it was easy to remember" — "The Konami Code" became a secret staple of the company's output and an indispensable cheat code for an entire generation of gamers who grew up on titles like Contra, Castlevania and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
In the case of Contra, the Konami Code would start the player with 30 lives instead of the usual three, making that side-scrolling shooting game somewhat beatable as opposed to impossible.
If you played multiplayer Contra, the final key presses are "Select, Start."
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Booga1 on Friday February 28 2020, @12:03PM (2 children)
This code was an absolute essential for games like Life Force, Contra, Gradius, and other Konami games. That code probably saved some of their games from being tossed away and ignored as overly difficult.
The most common result was 30 lives to start a game that usually only gave you 3 lives + 3 continues. In some games the code would give you an automatic set of power ups for your ship. You'd lose the power ups if you died, but if you put in the code a second time it would kill you for being greedy. Strategic timing was really important for those where you'd want to save it until you need it.
There used to be entire sections of magazines dedicated to collecting all the codes and secrets in the games available at the time. GamePro used to put out a quarterly edition that was all codes and tips.
However, cheat codes have fallen out of favor as games became less arcade-like and offered more forgiving methods of failure that didn't make you start the entire game over from scratch.
It would be kinda cool if Konami would find ways to continue using the code in a sort of long-running memorial to the guy.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 29 2020, @10:18AM (1 child)
> ...that didn't make you start the entire game over from scratch.
And THAT is what is wrong with kids today.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 29 2020, @01:12PM