Konami Code


The Konami Code is a cheat code that appears in many Konami video games, and some non-Konami games. In the original code, the player can press the following sequence of buttons on the game controller to enable a cheat or other effects:
The code has also found a place in popular culture as a reference to the third generation of video game consoles, and is present as an Easter egg in a number of websites.

History

The code was first used in the 1986 release of Gradius, a scrolling shooter for the NES and was popularized among North American players in the NES version of Contra, for which it was also dubbed both the "Contra Code" and "30 Lives Code", due to its near necessity in-game.
The Konami Code was created by Kazuhisa Hashimoto who was developing the home port of the 1985 arcade game Gradius for the NES. Finding the game too difficult to play through during testing, he created a cheat code to give the player a full set of power-ups. After entering the sequence using the controller when the game was paused the player received all available power-ups. The code was meant to be removed prior to publishing, but this was overlooked and discovered as the game was being prepared for mass production. The developers decided to leave it there, as removing it could result in new bugs and glitches. The sequence was easy enough to remember for testers and simultaneously sufficiently hard to enter accidentally during the gameplay for unsuspecting users.
The Konami Code was thus included in the series' other sequels and spin-offs, with some key differences:
The code has been subsequently re-used in a large number of [|other games] and a varied version of the code is now used in the Opera Browser to activate hidden advanced settings.

Variations of the Konami Code

The original version of the cheat code was designed for the NES controller. The exact sequence varies from game to game and has been adapted to fit the button layouts of different video game consoles, mostly the and buttons. For example:
These deviations may occur for purely operational reasons, to keep powerful upgrades better concealed while still referencing Konami, or through a programming error. Despite the differences, though, these codes are still often referred to in general discussion as "Konami Code", "Conami Kode", or, less commonly, "Pseudo-Konami Code". A common misconception is that the code ends with Start or Select Start. In many titles, the player must press Start after entering the code in order to start a game, or press Select to switch to two-player mode and then start the game, leading to the confusion.

Other games using the Konami code

Music