Invention of Konami Code

The Konami Code is a cheat code in video games, entered on the controller as a sequence of directional buttons followed by two action buttons and start. It was created by the Konami programmer Kazuhisa Hashimoto while he was working on the home console version of the shooting game Gradius, and he put it in so that he could easily get all the power-ups when testing the game, and then forgot to remove it. When it was entered, it gave the player a complete set of ship upgrades. It appeared in later Konami games, notably Contra, where it gave thirty lives, and became a cultural icon, used as a hidden surprise on websites, in software and in films.

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