According to a former colleague of Programmer Kazuhisa Hashimoto, the Konami Code creator passed away yesterday. Hashimoto?s lengthy tenure at Konami during the 1980s and 1990s, wherein he worked on the likes of Snatcher and ISS, served as nothing short of an incredible contribution to the gaming industry. However, the programmer?s legacy is most notably cemented in his creation of the famous Konami code, which involves the ?up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A? input. The NES version of Gradius (1986) represented the first game to make use of the iconic button input sequence.
Essentially, the special Konami command was a cheat code, since Hashimoto found the game too difficult during the testing phase. After finishing this particular sequence of button commands, the player would be given Gradius? complete set of power-ups, typically earned over the course of the game. The Hashimoto-created Konami Code was later popularized for North American audiences by Contra?s NES release. When entering the cheat code on the run and gun?s start screen, players were quickly rewarded with a total of 30 lives, as opposed to the standard three.
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