
Kazuhisa Hashimoto, a Japanese video recreation producer whose “Konami Code” permitted gamers to cheat their way to superhuman power, supplemental firepower and additional life, has died. He was 61.
His death was verified by a spokesman for Konami, the Japanese video clip sport maker where Mr. Hashimoto worked for many years. He did not specify the induce or where by Mr. Hashimoto died.
“We are saddened to listen to about the passing of Kazuhisa Hashimoto, a deeply talented producer who 1st introduced the planet to the ‘Konami Code,’” the corporation reported in a Twitter submit on Wednesday.
On common movie video game consoles, this sort of as the Nintendo Leisure Method that was commonly applied in the 1980s, the Konami Code was a sequence of button-pushes: up, up, down, down, still left, suitable, still left, suitable, B, A, commence.
In the many years considering that its development, it has turn into a famed hack. Quite a few players first utilised it to get much more life in the 1988 Nintendo activity Contra, and it has since been featured in a number of games, together with Dance Dance Revolution, Yu-Gi-Oh! and Fortnite.
He included that there was no huge tale behind the generation of the Konami Code he simply just desired it to conquer Gradius, a complicated house shooter match that he was converting, or porting, from arcade to console type.
“Because I was the a single who was likely to be utilizing it, I built absolutely sure it was uncomplicated to try to remember,” he stated.
In Gradius, the Konami Code gave players “power-ups,” which aided them defeat enemy spaceships. That match did not offer extremely perfectly, but developers ongoing to use the code in other solutions. It was baked into Contra, a run-and-gun game that was a professional achievements for Konami and Nintendo.
Contra created the Konami Code popular. Because then, its get to has exceeded the confines of movie sport consoles internet websites, films, tv shows and T-shirts have referred to it, much too.
Kazuhisa Hashimoto was born on Nov. 15, 1958, in accordance to the translated interview. He worked at Konami right up until 2010. Facts on survivors was not immediately offered.