Setting aside the platform developers and consoles, Tukko Labs would like to salute Konami as Tukko Developer of the Week! Though much of the Y generation are more familiar with Konami for such ground breaking franchises as Castlevania, Silent Hill, Dance Dance Revolution, (the actual list is quite long) and their latest ip’s of Metal Gear series, Many of the X generation would realize that we’ve been consuming their games much further back before the first home console came out.
Cue into the flashback in the early 80’s of me hanging out in the local arcade checking out the latest in technology… arcade video games. We’re talking about the days when you could sit your slurpee on top of those thick glassed arcade sit-downs, pumping a quarter for a round of pacman or Galaxia. The table that took me and my brother the most was Frogger.
This made me realize that we’ve been consuming games from Konami way longer than most other third party developers.
Konami had humble beginnings. It started out as a jukebox rental/repair business in Osaka. Owned by Kagemasa Kozuki , he then transformed the business into Konami Industry Co., Ltd in 1973. and began work on manufacturing “amusement machines” for arcades. Their first machine didn’t come out until 1978, and Frogger didn’t get exported to the USA up until 1981.
Though initial prospects were good with the venture into the arcade table business, they didn’t really hit it big until 1984 when they started manufacturing “Famicom” titles.
This was where we were smitten by such hits as Castlevania and Contra, and by then, Mario brothers was already gathering dust for the action side scroller pioneers.
This paved the way to become the multi-platform success that they are today. Their titles are featured still in today’s latest arcades. We see their names on our game collection backpanels for pc, Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony consoles.
These days were amazed by the latest titles in their series of Metal Gear and Silent hill, while you have those Dance Dance Revolution, Guitar Freaks tables at the arcade.
So with our hats off, we salute Konami for being such a resilient company that has thoroughly entertained us at the innovation, graphical and even movement game entertainment, not to mention achievement of standing the test of time for the past 29 years.
