Konami

Konami Corporation (コナミ株式会社) is a leading developer and publisher of numerous popular and strong-selling toys, trading cards, anime, tokusatsu, slot machines, arcade cabinets, and video games. The company was founded in 1969 as a jukebox rental and repair business in Osaka, Japan, by Kagemasa Kōzuki, the still-current chairman and CEO. The name "Konami" is a conjunction of the names Kagemasa Kōzuki, Yoshinobu Nakama, Hiro Matsuda, and Shokichi Ishihara, who were partners acquired by Kozuki and the original founders of Konami Industry Co., Ltd in 1973. Konami also can mean "small wave(s)" in the Japanese language.

History
On March 19, 1973, Kozuki transformed the business into Konami Industry Co., Ltd. and began work on manufacturing "amusement machines" for arcades. Their first actual game machine was not created until 1978.

Between 1982 and 1985, Konami manufactured and sold game software for home PCs, producing games for the MSX and the Nintendo Entertainment System. This new business was in addition to, not in place of, the arcades, and many hit console games of this time period were ports of the arcade versions. Konami of America Inc. was established in Torrance, California in 1982 but moved to Wood Dale, Illinois in 1984. Also in 1984, Konami expanded to the United Kingdom and established Konami Limited.

Konami began to achieve great success when the Famicom took off, being released in the United States as the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). Many of the NES/Famicom's bestselling titles were produced by Konami, including Gradius, the Castlevania series, the Contra series, and Metal Gear. Konami was one of the most active and prolific third party development studios for the NES, which led to conflict with Nintendo of America's licensing restrictions. During the heyday of the NES, Nintendo of America controlled the production of all licensed NES software titles, and limited third party developers to a maximum of five titles per year. Several companies found a way around this restriction by founding quasi-independent subsidiary corporations, effectively doubling the number of games that they could release during the year. In the case of Konami, this subsidiary was known as Ultra Games, and a large number of Konami titles were published in North America under their banner, including the original Metal Gear, Gyruss, Skate or Die, the first two Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles games, and Snake's Revenge. In Europe, faced with a similar restriction placed by Nintendo's European branch, Konami established Palcom Software Ltd. to the same end. By the early 1990s, Nintendo of America had relaxed many of its licensing restrictions, and, no longer needed, Ultra was shut down in 1992, with the remainder of its staff being reabsorbed into Konami's official American branch.

In 1992, members of Konami left to form Treasure Co. Ltd, which, like Konami, is also well known in the video gaming community for creating high caliber shooters and action games.

In 1999, Konami moved its U.S corporate offices from Buffalo Grove, Illinois to its current location in Redwood City, California. The Buffalo Grove location remained open strictly for the manufacturing of Konami's arcade video games.

In 2003, Konami of America closed down their arcade division due to heavy losses; the entire Buffalo Grove location was shut down along with it.

Also in 2003, Konami teamed up with the Japanese film production company, Toho Company, Ltd. in creating their own genre of tokusatsu TV series, known as the Chōseishin Series, in attempt to emulate and rival the success of Toei's Super Sentai genre.

In 2005, Konami became the majority owner of Hudson Soft. Konami has an office and gaming production facility in Las Vegas, Nevada for its casino gaming equipment subsidiary, Konami Gaming.

Konami is today the fourth largest game developer in Japan after (in descending order) |Nintendo Co, Ltd., Sega Sammy Holdings, and Namco Bandai Holdings.

Games
Konami has created some of the biggest and most memorable video games over the years. Genre-defining titles attributed to Konami include the vampire-hunting Castlevania series, the survival horror Silent Hill series, the action/shooter Contra series, the platform/adventure Ganbare Goemon series, the espionage action Metal Gear series, the console role-playing Suikoden series, the music-oriented emani series (which includes Dance Dance Revolution, among others) and the dating simulation Tokimeki Memorial series.

Konami is also notorious for its famous password, The Konami Code, which traditionally gives many powerups in its games. Although variants also exist, as in the Parodius series, and button naming can differ depending on the controller used, the classic Famicom or NES combination is: Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, Start.

Related to the Call of Duty series
Konami helped publish Call of Duty 2.