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Konami

The Osaka jukebox business whose games other companies' names sold

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Kagemasa Kozuki started Konami in Osaka in 1969 renting and repairing jukeboxes. Its early arcade hits reached America as Stern's Scramble and Sega's Frogger, and Britain through Ocean's Imagine label; it then became one of Nintendo's first licensees, formed Ultra to publish more NES games, and made a fortune from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. On the PlayStation it published Metal Gear Solid, Silent Hill and Pro Evolution Soccer; it later spread into casino machines, card games and gyms, turned to mobile games in 2015, the year Hideo Kojima left, and has since returned to console remakes.

Outside Japan, Konami’s best-known early games carried other companies’ names. American arcade charts in 1982 and 1983 listed Scramble as a Stern game and Frogger as Sega/Gremlin’s. British players bought Hypersports and Green Beret from Imagine. The company behind them had started in 1969 renting jukeboxes in Osaka. It was one of the first companies Nintendo allowed to make Famicom cartridges, and by 1991 it was making a fortune from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Fast facts

  • Founded: 1969 in Osaka by Kagemasa Kozuki, renting and repairing jukeboxes.
  • Incorporated: as Konami Industry Co., Ltd. in 1973.
  • Name: said to combine the founders’ names. Public accounts disagree about which founders.
  • Arcade games: Scramble, Frogger, Super Cobra, Tutankham and Track & Field, licensed abroad to Stern, Sega and others; later Gradius (Nemesis in Europe), Green Beret and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles coin-op.
  • Home games: MSX cartridges, including Metal Gear; NES games, including Gradius, Castlevania and Contra.
  • In America: a US subsidiary from 1982, and a second NES publishing company, Ultra, from 1987.
  • In Britain: Konami’s coin-ops were converted for home computers mostly by Ocean, under the Imagine label.
  • PlayStation era: Winning Eleven (Pro Evolution Soccer), Metal Gear Solid, Silent Hill; in arcades, Beatmania and Dance Dance Revolution.
  • Beyond games: casino machines (Konami Gaming, 1997), the Yu-Gi-Oh! card game (1999), Konami Sports fitness clubs (2001), Hudson Soft (stake from 2001, merged 2012).
  • Since 2015: a turn to mobile, Hideo Kojima’s departure, and from 2024 remakes of Silent Hill 2 and Metal Gear Solid 3.

Jukeboxes to arcade games

Retro Gamer‘s 2008 history of the company says Kagemasa Kozuki began renting and maintaining jukeboxes for Japan’s growing number of leisure establishments in 1969, from a base in Osaka. When piped music began to replace jukeboxes, he and his partners moved into amusement machines, and in 1973 they set up Konami Industry Co., Ltd., with capital of one million yen. The name, the magazine says, was made from the partners’ names and can be read as “small wave”.

The partners’ names are where public sources part. Retro Gamer names Yoshinobu Nakama, Hiro Matsuda and Shokichi Ishihara. Wikipedia, a secondary source, names Nakama and Tatsuo Miyasako. A period photograph supports at least part of the first list: in September 1984 Electronic Games showed “Mr. Matsuda, one of Konami’s founders”, with “Mr. Ishihara, creator of Track & Field” and “Mr. Kozuki, President of Konami”, opening a five-storey research building in Osaka for 150 engineers. Edge in 1996 dated Kozuki’s appointment as chief executive of Konami Kogyo (Konami Industry) to 1974.

Games under other names

Konami’s arcade games spread through licences. Retro Gamer describes a deal under which Stern Electronics made and placed Konami’s machines in America, and Sega distributed them in Japan and took any that Stern passed over. The American press credited the licensees. Electronic Games’ arcade charts in 1982 and 1983 listed Scramble under Stern and Frogger under Sega/Gremlin, and Video Games called the Coleco home version of Time Pilot faithful to “the Konami original”.

Frogger’s home rights show how little anyone expected of it. Richard Stearns of Parker Brothers told Video Games in 1983 that when the company bought them from Sega, “Frogger was nothing. It was kind of a mediocre arcade game.” The home rights ended up divided. Parker Brothers had the consoles and issued a Commodore 64 cartridge as well. Sierra On-Line, under its Sierravision label, published the computer versions for the Atari 8-bits, the Apple II and the Commodore 64. In 1983 two different Froggers were being advertised for the same machine, each by the company that had programmed it.

Konami set up a US subsidiary in 1982, according to David Sheff’s Game Over, and its own name began to appear on its games. By January 1985 Electronic Games was listing Track & Field as a Konami game.

MSX

Konami also wrote for MSX, the shared home computer standard, and sold its MSX games in Britain on ROM cartridges. In December 1987 The Games Machine reviewed Metal Gear, an MSX cartridge at £20.95, and noted that Konami had “supported the UK MSX market (consisting of some two hundred thousand users) since its inception a couple of years ago”. The reviewer had “no information concerning which of the 60 possible Japanese authors who create for the MSX are responsible for Metal Gear, but whoever they may be they certainly seem to know their business.”

How Konami reached Britain

For most of the 1980s a British player did not buy a Konami game from Konami. They bought it from Ocean, under the Imagine name Ocean had bought when the original Imagine collapsed.

Those conversions were some of the best-reviewed games on the label. When Imagine gathered them into the Konami Arcade Collection in 1988, CRASH listed the Spectrum ratings: Mikie 93%, Hypersports 92%, Yie Ar Kung Fu 92%, Ping Pong 90%, Green Beret 88%.

In April 1986 Amtix talked to David Ward and Colin Stokes of Ocean about the deal, and they were candid about how little the licence guaranteed. Ocean had picked Hypersports as “the real blockbuster” of the package, but the freelance programmer converting it “nearly gave up programming the game”, so that “by the time it came in we were so relieved to get the flipping thing out on the streets”.

Konami also released games in Britain under its own name, and these fared worse. CRASH gave Konami’s Spectrum Jail Break 47% in March 1987 and Nemesis 59% two months later. One reviewer called Nemesis “an overly difficult, overpriced and mostly unplayable shoot ’em up”. Both ended up on Imagine’s collection too.

The Ocean arrangement continued into the 16-bit years. Amiga User International reported in July 1988 “a new agreement between Konami U.S. and Ocean”: Amiga versions of Nemesis, Gradius, Jackal, Iron Horse and Salamander would be “produced by Konami U.S. but released in the U.K. by Ocean”.

Nintendo, Ultra and the Turtles

Konami was one of the first companies Nintendo licensed to make their own Famicom cartridges, alongside Taito, Capcom, Bandai, Namco and Hudson. Sheff writes that the licence made Konami: “In five years, its earnings shot up from $10 million in 1987 to $300 million in 1991.”

In America, Sheff says, Konami’s first NES game was Gradius. Nintendo of America limited each licensee to five games a year, so in 1987 Konami persuaded Minoru Arakawa to let it form a second company, Ultra, with a second licence. Ultra took the licence for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and in 1989 and 1990, by Sheff’s figures, Konami took $125 million from the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles NES game, which sold more than four million copies. The Turtles were in Konami’s arcade machines too, and Sheff reports that one TMNT coin-op in a good spot could take $1,000 a week.

The Konami Code

Konami’s name is also attached to a cheat: up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A. Kazuhisa Hashimoto, who programmed the Famicom version of Gradius, told Retro Gamer why he put it in: “The arcade version of Gradius is really difficult. I never played it that much, and there was no way I could finish the game, so I inserted the so-called Konami code.” In America it spread through Contra: the first issue of Nintendo Power, in 1988, printed it as a way to “start your game with over 30 extra men”. The Konami Code entry follows it further.

PlayStation, Metal Gear Solid and Silent Hill

By the mid-1990s Konami was writing for Sony’s PlayStation. Edge reported in 1996 that it had twelve PlayStation games in development. Two of its longest-running Japanese series started on the machine in 1995: the baseball game Jikkyō Powerful Pro Yakyū and the football game Winning Eleven, which reached Europe under the ISS Pro names and, from 2001, as Pro Evolution Soccer. By 2004 Pro Evolution Soccer 4 was the fifth best-selling game of the year in Britain.

Hideo Kojima, who had made Metal Gear for the MSX, brought the series back on the PlayStation. Edge reviewed the Japanese release of Metal Gear Solid in November 1998, at ¥5,800, and warned readers not to treat it as a shooting game: “MGS is certainly not an action game.” Its story was told in cut-scenes of a length few games had tried, “over ten minutes’ worth is not uncommon”, which was why it needed two CDs. Collectors could pay ¥9,800 for a Premium Package with a dog tag, a soundtrack CD and an art book. It was not the biggest game in Japan that winter: a month later Edge passed on Famitsu’s finding that Nintendo’s new Pocket Monsters game with Pikachu was outselling it two to one.

Konami’s Tokyo studio, KCET, followed it with Silent Hill in 1999. The town is lost in fog. Other games used fog to hide how little of the scene the hardware could draw, Edge noted, but Silent Hill used it to heighten tension. Its story frustrated the reviewer: “By usual benchmarks it’s terrible; in the context of reproducing a nightmare, it’s nearly brilliant.”

Dancing, cards, casinos and gyms

The arcades gave Konami a new kind of hit at the end of the 1990s. Beatmania, a DJ game, and its successors made up the series of music games Konami called Bemani. At the JAMMA arcade show in 1998 Edge found that “Konami’s sensational Dance Dance Revolution”, in which players stepped on coloured foot pads in time with the music, “was a massive hit” with the visitors, alongside Beatmania 3rd Mix and Gradius 4.

At the same time Konami was moving well beyond video games. It set up Konami Gaming in Las Vegas in 1997 to make casino machines, and in 1999 it launched the Yu-Gi-Oh! trading card game. In February 2001 it bought control of People Co., a chain of fitness clubs, and in June renamed it Konami Sports; the gyms traded as Konami Sports Club. The same year it bought a stake in Hudson Soft, the maker of Bomberman. Konami took a majority in 2005, made Hudson a subsidiary in April 2011 and merged it into Konami Digital Entertainment on 1 March 2012.

Mobile first, and Kojima’s departure

In May 2015 Konami’s president, Hideki Hayakawa, told the Japanese site Nikkei Trendy Net where the company was heading: “We will pursue mobile games aggressively. Our main platform will be mobiles.” Mobile versions of Power Pro and Winning Eleven were already earning well. The company was renamed Konami Holdings that year.

The same year Kojima left. Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, released in 2015, was the last Metal Gear game he made for Konami. Silent Hills, the series revival he had been making with the film director Guillermo del Toro, was cancelled, and its playable teaser, P.T., was withdrawn from the PlayStation Store. At The Game Awards on 3 December 2015, where Metal Gear Solid V won awards, the host Geoff Keighley told the audience: “Mr. Kojima had every intention of being with us tonight, but unfortunately he was informed by a lawyer representing Konami just recently that he would not be allowed to travel to tonight’s awards ceremony to accept any awards.” On 16 December 2015 Sony announced an agreement with Kojima Productions, “a newly formed studio”, to make a PlayStation 4 game. “I will be taking on a new challenge by establishing my own independent studio,” Kojima said. That game became Death Stranding. Koji Igarashi, the designer of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, had also left.

When Konami turned 50 in 2019, Wireframe marked the anniversary with a profile that chose to leave the recent years out, noting that “with Konami’s attention more focused on pachinko machines, fitness centres, and mobile apps”, it was hard to remember that it “was once one of the greatest developers on the planet”.

The football series changed too. In September 2021 Konami replaced Pro Evolution Soccer with eFootball, free to play. Players found it full of bugs, and within a day of its release it had become the worst-reviewed game on Steam. Konami promised updates to fix it.

Remakes and the present

In 2020 Kimihiko Higashio became Konami’s president, the first from outside the founding family, and in 2022 the company became Konami Group. It then went back to its old series on consoles. The Silent Hill 2 remake, made by Bloober Team, came out on 8 October 2024 and had sold two million copies by the end of January 2025. Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater, a remake of the 2004 Metal Gear Solid 3, made without Kojima or the series artist Yoji Shinkawa, passed a million copies on its release day, 28 August 2025. Silent Hill f, a new game written by Ryukishi07, sold a million in four days after its launch on 25 September 2025. In the year to March 2025 Konami reported record results: revenue of ¥421.6 billion and a net profit of ¥74.6 billion.

Sources

  • Retro Gamer issue 53 (2008), pp. 24–27: developer lookback: founding in 1969, the 1973 company, the partners and the name, the Stern and Sega distribution deals; Kazuhisa Hashimoto on the Konami code.
  • Electronic Games vol. 2 no. 14, September 1984: “Konami fetes new R&D building” (Matsuda, Ishihara, Kozuki; Osaka; 150 engineers).
  • Edge issue 30, March 1996, p. 63: Kozuki at Konami Kogyo from 1974; Konami’s earnings; twelve PlayStation games in development.
  • Electronic Games arcade charts, November 1982 and March, May and June 1983 (Scramble under Stern, Frogger under Sega/Gremlin); Electronic Games vol. 3 no. 1, January 1985 (Track and Field listed under Konami).
  • Video Games (US) vol. 2 no. 1, October 1983, pp. 21–22: Richard Stearns of Parker Brothers on Frogger.
  • Video Games (US) vol. 2 no. 6, March 1984, pp. 77–78: Time Pilot for the 2600, “the Konami original”.
  • Sierra On-Line advertisement, Compute! June 1983 and Compute!’s Gazette July 1983; Parker Brothers advertisement, Electronic Games December 1983: the two Frogger publishers.
  • David Sheff, Game Over (GamePress edition, 1999), pp. 61–62 and 217–219: the first Famicom licensees and Konami’s earnings; the US subsidiary in 1982; Gradius on the NES; Ultra; the Turtles revenue and sales; arcade takings.
  • The Games Machine issue 2, December 1987, p. 61: Metal Gear review (MSX cartridge, £20.95; Konami and the UK MSX market).
  • CRASH issue 38, March 1987 (Jail Break, 47%); issue 40, May 1987, p. 110 (Nemesis, Konami, £7.95); issue 60, January 1989, pp. 105–106 (Konami Arcade Collection and its ratings).
  • Amtix issue 6, April 1986, p. 83: interview with David Ward and Colin Stokes of Ocean.
  • Amiga User International, July 1988: the Konami U.S. and Ocean agreement.
  • Nintendo Power issue 1, July/August 1988: the Contra code.
  • Wikipedia, “Konami” (web, secondary): the founders as Kozuki, Nakama and Miyasako. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konami
  • The Shashi, “Konami Group (TSE 9766): company history” (web, secondary), from Konami’s securities reports: the 1969 and 1973 dates; Jikkyō Powerful Pro Yakyū and Winning Eleven in 1995; Konami Gaming in 1997; Yu-Gi-Oh! in 1999; People and Hudson in 2001; the Konami Holdings name and Kojima’s departure in 2015; Kimihiko Higashio as president in 2020; the Konami Group name in 2022; results for the year to March 2025. https://the-shashi.com/en/tse/9766/
  • Wikipedia, “Pro Evolution Soccer” (web, secondary): J.League Jikkyō Winning Eleven in July 1995; the ISS Pro titles in Europe; Pro Evolution Soccer from 2001; eFootball on 30 September 2021. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pro_Evolution_Soccer
  • Edge issue 146, February 2005: the UK’s best-selling games of 2004 (Pro Evolution Soccer 4 fifth).
  • Edge issue 64, November 1998: Metal Gear Solid review (Japanese release, ¥5,800), the Premium Package at ¥9,800, and the JAMMA show report on Dance Dance Revolution, Beatmania 3rd Mix and Gradius 4.
  • Edge issue 65, December 1998: Famitsu’s sales figures for Metal Gear Solid and Pocket Monsters.
  • Edge issue 70, April 1999, p. 72: Silent Hill review (KCET).
  • US Securities and Exchange Commission, Konami Corporation correspondence, 2006: control of People Co. in February 2001 and the Konami Sports name in June 2001; the Konami Sports Club brand. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1191141/000119312506196142/filename1.htm
  • Nintendo World Report, “Hudson Soft Being Absorbed by Konami”, 18 January 2012 (web, secondary): Konami’s stake from 2001, majority in 2005, subsidiary in April 2011 and merger on 1 March 2012. http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/news/29000/hudson-soft-being-absorbed-by-konami
  • Nintendo Life, “Mobile Is Konami’s Future, According To President Hideki Hayakawa”, 14 May 2015 (web, secondary), reporting Hayakawa’s interview with Nikkei Trendy Net. https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2015/05/mobile_is_konamis_future_according_to_president_hideki_hayakawa
  • Wireframe issue 2, November 2018, pp. 50–51: Hideo Kojima profile; Metal Gear Solid V; P.T.; Guillermo del Toro and the cancelled Silent Hills.
  • Wireframe issue 10, March 2019, pp. 50–51: “Konami at 50”: Kojima’s departure, Silent Hills cancelled and P.T. withdrawn in 2015; Koji Igarashi; pachinko machines, fitness centres and mobile apps.
  • Patrick Klepek, “Geoff Keighley: Konami Barred Hideo Kojima From Accepting Metal Gear Award”, Kotaku, 3 December 2015 (web, secondary): transcript of Keighley’s on-stage statement at The Game Awards, quoted as his words. https://kotaku.com/geoff-keighley-konami-barred-hideo-kojima-from-accepti-1746111339
  • Sony Interactive Entertainment, “Sony Computer Entertainment Enters into an Agreement with Kojima Productions”, 16 December 2015. https://sonyinteractive.com/en/press-releases/2015/sony-computer-entertainment-enters-into-an-agreement-with-kojima-productions/
  • PCGamesN, “Konami promises fixes as eFootball 2022 becomes the worst-reviewed game on Steam”, 1 October 2021 (web, secondary). https://www.pcgamesn.com/efootball-2022/steam-reviews
  • Konami Digital Entertainment, “SILENT HILL 2 remake … surpasses 2 million units sold”, 29 January 2025: release on 8 October 2024; Bloober Team. https://www.konami.com/games/eu/en/topics/18450/
  • Gematsu, “Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater shipments and digital sales top one million”, September 2025 (web, secondary), reporting Konami’s announcement. https://www.gematsu.com/2025/09/metal-gear-solid-delta-snake-eater-shipments-and-digital-sales-top-one-million
  • Wikipedia, “Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater” (web, secondary): a remake of Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, made without Kojima or Yoji Shinkawa. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metal_Gear_Solid_Delta:_Snake_Eater
  • Konami Digital Entertainment, “SILENT HILL f Achieves One Million Units Sold”, 29 September 2025: release on 25 September 2025; Ryukishi07. https://www.konami.com/games/eu/en/topics/18858/

See also

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