Presentation
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Even someone who has never finished Gradius may know this sequence.
The Konami Code is one of those fragments of video games that left their original work to become a cultural gesture. It is a good entry point into Konami, a company hard to sum up by a single genre, a single franchise, or a single author.
Its history goes through Gradius, Castlevania, Contra, Metal Gear, Winning Eleven then PES and eFootball, Silent Hill, Suikoden, DanceDanceRevolution, and Yu-Gi-Oh!. Few companies have made shoot 'em ups, stealth, horror, football, RPGs, music games, and collectible cards coexist for so long.
This diversity comes directly from its history.
Konami was born in 1969 around the sale, rental, and repair of jukeboxes, before turning to amusement machines and arcades. The company then accompanied personal computers, MSX, home consoles, mobile, and online services, while developing other activities around cards, machines, and sport.
Today, video games are mainly carried by Konami Digital Entertainment within a much larger group.
Behind this dispersion, however, there is coherence.
Konami has often excelled when it turned a clear rule into a habit: gradually building your ship in Gradius, avoiding rather than facing in Metal Gear, reading space in PES, learning to fear an environment in Silent Hill, mastering a deck's interactions in Yu-Gi-Oh!.
The universes change.
The system becomes a ritual.
The other great particularity of Konami appears over time: the company owns a heritage so vast that it must constantly decide which works should be preserved, transformed, entrusted to other teams, or truly relaunched.
Its history is therefore not a continuous ascent.
It works in cycles: some franchises dominate a period, disappear, then return as a collection, a remake, or a new production.
Konami has never had a single genre. It has above all had the talent of turning certain systems into habits — then certain habits into culture.
History
1969-1984: from amusement machines to home gaming
Konami considers March 21, 1969 as its founding date, when Kagemasa Kozuki launched an activity linked to jukeboxes in Toyonaka.
KONAMI INDUSTRY CO., LTD. was officially formed in 1973 and gradually turned toward amusement machines.
The arcade became its first great school.
In this environment, a production had to attract quickly, explain its rules without detour, and make the player want to try again after a failure.
This culture of rhythm and return remained durably visible.
Scramble, released in 1981, became one of the first major milestones. In the early 1980s, Konami then broadened its activity to personal computers, the MSX, and the Famicom/NES.
The change of support opened new possibilities.
An arcade cabinet demanded an intense and immediate experience.
At home, a game could develop more exploration, progression, and length.
Konami would learn to do both.
1985-1987: several languages appear almost simultaneously
The second half of the 1980s already sums up the company's extraordinary diversity.
Gradius appeared in 1985 with its upgrade system where the player decides how to evolve his ship. The Japanese Famicom version in 1986 then popularized the Konami Code, which would go far beyond the game that made it known.
The same year began Castlevania.
In 1987, Contra and Metal Gear offered almost two opposite philosophies: frontal action for one, avoidance and observation for the other.
Metal Gear is particularly revealing. A technical limitation making it hard to display many enemies becomes a game design idea: rather than face everyone, the player must progress without being spotted.
The constraint becomes a language.
By the end of the 1980s, Konami already had several creative identities strong enough that none could alone sum up the company.
The 1990s: the catalog becomes culturally immense
The 1990s added more new branches.
The series that would become Winning Eleven / Pro Evolution Soccer began in 1995 and gradually built a reputation around the feel of football and reading space.
Suikoden appeared the same year and notably used the recruitment of the 108 Stars of Destiny as a structuring principle.
In 1997, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night profoundly transformed the series' exploration and helped install a language later associated with the term "Metroidvania."
The arcade continued in parallel with BEMANI, Beatmania, and DanceDanceRevolution, where the machine itself became an essential part of the experience.
In 1999, Silent Hill turned fog and display limits into atmosphere. The same period saw Konami launch in Japan the Yu-Gi-Oh! Official Card Game, which would become one of the great international collectible card games.
At the start of the 2000s, Konami already owned a heritage of exceptional diversity.
This richness also became a management problem.
Not all franchises could remain priorities at the same time.
The 2000s: several authors, one house
At the beginning of the 21st century, Metal Gear Solid, Silent Hill, Castlevania, PES, Suikoden, Yu-Gi-Oh!, Contra, Gradius, and DanceDanceRevolution coexisted under the same umbrella.
Some properties became strongly associated with creative personalities.
Hideo Kojima became inseparable from Metal Gear.
Koji Igarashi is strongly linked to a Castlevania period.
Akira Yamaoka played a major role in the sonic identity of Silent Hill.
This situation reveals a lasting tension in large cultural companies: the legal ownership of a franchise may be clear, while its creative identity rests on people who may one day leave.
In 2006, Konami Digital Entertainment took its current form and became the core of the group's digital activities.
The name Konami nevertheless continued to publicly designate a much larger whole than this single company.
The 2010s: changing the center of gravity
During the 2010s, the perception of Konami changed strongly among part of the Western console audience.
Mobile, online services, and other activities took more space, while several historical franchises became less visible in the form of major traditional games.
The break with Hideo Kojima around Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain in 2015 became the most publicized symbol of this period.
Metal Gear remains a Konami property.
Its most identified creator left the company.
This separation raised a question the group would have to address in the following years: how to continue a collective work when its most visible author is no longer there?
At the same time, the football series gradually evolved toward eFootball and a free-to-play model maintained over time.
Konami therefore did not leave video games.
Its center of gravity changed.
The 2020s: turning the catalog into active heritage
From the 2020s, several historical franchises took on a much more visible role again.
The return does not follow a single formula.
Metal Gear began by coming back through a collection.
Silent Hill 2 received a remake developed by Bloober Team.
Suikoden returned as a remaster.
Gradius Origins combined preservation and new content.
Metal Gear Solid Δ: Snake Eater rebuilt a historical installment for modern platforms.
Other projects directly extended the properties with new interpretations.
This variety matters more than the list itself.
Konami seems to have accepted that an immense heritage cannot be reactivated with a single "remake" button.
Some works need to be made accessible.
Others need to be rebuilt.
Some can be entrusted to external partners.
And some finally need to produce new memories.
Collaborating to keep several heritages alive
Modern Konami largely relies on external teams for some of its historical properties.
This organization lets the group be both owner, publisher, producer, and franchise guardian without rebuilding a specialized team in-house for each series.
The model obviously carries a risk: multiplying interpretations can dilute an identity.
But it also offers an important possibility.
An old property can meet a new team able to understand its memory without simply imitating its former creators.
Heritage then becomes a problem of curation as much as production.
A company that works in cycles
Looking at Konami over more than half a century avoids looking for a linear progression.
Some franchises become central then disappear for years.
Economic priorities change.
Creators leave.
Mobile or services take more space.
Then old properties return.
This irregularity explains part of the historical frustration of the public.
It also explains why every major return can carry so much weight.
Konami does not look like a studio chaining increasingly ambitious projects.
It looks more like a living library whose shelves stay closed for years before being reopened.
What Sets It Apart
Systems easy to identify, hard to exhaust
Konami is much harder to sum up than an auteur studio.
Its catalog spans too many genres.
A constant nonetheless appears in several of its major productions: a central system relatively easy to explain but deep enough to become a habit.
The Power Meter of Gradius.
The stealth of Metal Gear.
The ball feel of PES.
The deck building of Yu-Gi-Oh!.
The arcade heritage remains visible: the player quickly understands what he must do, then discovers much more slowly how to do it well.
This combination helps explain why some mechanics survived well beyond their technical era.
Turning a constraint into identity
Konami's history contains several famous examples of limitations becoming ideas.
Metal Gear turns a display difficulty into a stealth principle.
Silent Hill turns the fog needed to limit visible distance into a major element of its atmosphere.
The phenomenon is obviously not unique to Konami.
But these cases illustrate a useful culture: a constraint does not always need to be hidden.
It can sometimes become the rule that makes the experience unique.
Property and author are not the same thing
Konami owns franchises deeply associated with specific creators.
Hideo Kojima's departure makes this tension particularly visible with Metal Gear, but the problem goes beyond one person.
A company can legally own a property.
The cultural identity of that property can nonetheless rest on authors, composers, artists, and teams that do not belong to it forever.
The modern returns of the catalog must therefore solve a delicate problem: keeping these universes alive without turning them into imitations of those who once defined them.
This distinction between legal property and creative memory is one of the most interesting questions in Konami's history.
Making heritage a living material
Owning an immense catalog only has cultural value if the works can still be encountered.
Collections, remasters, and remakes make some productions accessible on modern machines.
But preservation is not always enough.
A heritage remains truly alive when it can also produce new interpretations, new installments, or new habits.
Konami must therefore constantly choose between several gestures: preserve, rebuild, extend, or wait.
This is probably the best way to understand its current period.
The past is no longer just an archive.
It becomes an editorial material the company reactivates in different forms.
Good to Know
- Konami considers March 21, 1969 as its founding date, when Kagemasa Kozuki launched an activity linked to jukeboxes in Toyonaka.
- KONAMI INDUSTRY CO., LTD. was officially formed in 1973 before becoming today's KONAMI GROUP CORPORATION.
- Scramble was released in 1981 and belongs to the company's first major arcade productions.
- Gradius appeared in 1985; the famous Konami Code was popularized with its 1986 Japanese Famicom version.
- Castlevania began in 1986, while Contra and Metal Gear appeared in 1987.
- The Winning Eleven / PES / eFootball line began in Japan in 1995; Suikoden appeared the same year.
- Silent Hill and the Yu-Gi-Oh! Official Card Game both appeared in 1999.
- Konami Digital Entertainment took its current form in 2006 and today carries most of the group's video game and digital activities.
- Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain was released in 2015 before Hideo Kojima's departure from Konami.
- Since the 2020s, Konami has progressively put several historical properties back into circulation through collections, remasters, remakes, and new projects.