Former Konami employee and creator of the famous Konami code, Kazuhisa Hashimoto aged 61 has died. The news of his passing comes after Konami confirmed the death on Wednesday, via a Tweet from official account.
“We are saddened to hear about the passing of Kazuhisa Hashimoto, a deeply talented producer who first introduced the world to the ‘Konami Code.”
Konami code first in the 1986 release of Gradius for the NES, but the code saw rise in popularity with the release of Contra in North America. The code wasn’t intentional and accidentally made its way to the final game release. Kazuhisa Hashimoto was tasked with porting famous Konami arcade titles to NES. He added the code to playtest those notoriously difficult games with ease and save time on port. However, in the final release of games, he forgot to remove the code and it made its way to the consumer releases.
Since then the famous “Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A and Start” code has made its way into countless other games and as well as in pop cultures, such as clothing, advertisements, and non-gaming related things such as officially appearing in Canada’s commemorative $10 bill launch.
