Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A.
The legendary Konami Code turned 35 in April. On April 25, 1986, he made his debut in the Famicom version of Gradius. Gradius had already appeared for Arcades in Japan some time before. But the legendary code first appeared in the Famicom implementation.
Later, the cheat code should appear in many other Konami games and get legendary status. Everyone knows the code by now. Also because many other developers used it for their games, be it as a cheat code or as an Easter egg.
Konami has now added celebrations. The chilled music arrangements of Gradius, Ganbare Goemon, TwinBee and other games were available as early as April. You will find them below. With another new arrangement, Tokyo Machine now adds a new Gradius remix.
In addition, Konami now has a birthday website switched. There you will find all videos and actions combined and you are there too brand new merchandise about the Konami code.
Invented because Gradius was too heavy
The code was invented by Kazuhisa Hashimoto, part of the team responsible for porting Gradius for NES at the time. He had to play through the game to test it for bugs. But the shoot ’em up was just too hard for him. He programmed the cheat code to get power ups.
After that, many of Hashimoto’s colleagues initially adopted the code for other Konami games. As its popularity grew, it was used in more and more games. In Life Force you get 30 lives, also in Contra. The code made its way into the Metal Gear Solid series and into games from other developers. It is now practically a pop culture phenomenon.
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Gaming Historian – The Konami Code
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