Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A, start, This sequence of commands will be particularly familiar to long-established players. It is the now legendary Konami Code. A cheat code that is firmly anchored in gaming culture to this day.
Kazuhisa Hashimoto, the inventor of said code, died on February 25, 2020. The composer Yuji Takenouchi shared this on Twitter with the public:
"Programmer Kazuhisa Hashimoto, inventor of the Konami command" Up, Down, Left, Right, Left, and Right BA, "died last night. We pray for his soul."
???????????????? BA ????????????????????????????????? ??????????????????
– TECHNOuchi ??? (@TECHNOuchi) February 26, 2020
Hashimoto has been a developer of various game series for many years and turned 61.
Where does the Konami code come from?
The code itself first appeared in the Gradius sidescroller for the Nintendo Entertainment System and was used to immediately give the player all the powerups at once. Hashimoto developed the cheat because he always found Gradius too difficult to play through, but forgot to remove it before the release.
After that, the cheat was reinstalled in almost all games in the Gradius series and even spilled over to other game series. In particular within the contra series, it was used again and again and became internationally famous.
The code became so famous that Konami used it in almost every one of its players and always triggered different effects. For example in the Metal Gear series and at Castlevania. But other developers and publishers also started to use the cheat in their games.
These include:
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Anno 1800: Spawns hundreds of random animals that fly through the air.
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Anthem: Changes the soundtrack on the title screen.
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Borderlands 2: Makes Claptrap a little more annoying.
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Fortnite: Activated a burger mini-game during the black hole event.
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Rocket League: Turns the main menu into the menu of Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle-Cars.
The Konami code will very likely be used in many other games over the next few years.
