In Kobe, 1969, Mr. Kozuki decided to start company which should develop and sell arcade games, the name became Konami Industry Company Ltd. The first real game Konami made was called Astro Invader and sold quite well. Later they had other successes such as Frogger, Super Cobra and Scramble. Konami formed a US subsidiary in 1982 and began making LCD games, which at that time were very popular. But the arcade sales in Japan started to slow down quite a bit for Konami, and they had to find new ways to earn money if they wanted to survive.
It was around this time Nintendo's Famicom was released. Konami was one of the first to get a license to make games for Nintendo's Famicom videogame, as well as when it was released in America as the Nintendo Entertainment System. The first game on the NES was Gradius, an old arcade hit, which was released in February 1987. Next arcade hit to be released on the NES was Rush 'N Attack. Konami also released a few movie based games, such as TopGun which sold around 2 million copies.
Konami was the first to convince Nintendo to break the rules about companies only being allowed to release five games each year, one of Nintendo's ideas to prevent low quality games, because a company only had five "tries" each year, so they'd better make some good games if they wanted to stay in business. So in 1987 Konami formed a new company, called Ultra, and was now able to release five more games each year. One of Ultra's releases would become one of the best selling games of all time. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, which began as a black and white comicbook back in may 1984 and sold 175 copies.
Ultra signed a license with Mirage Studio, a company the two guys behind Turtles, Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird, formed, and was now ready to made videogames based to the Turtles story like a star wars galaxy of heroes hack. Konami got $125 million from the first Turtles, more than 4 million games were sold in the US alone.
In Europe, where Konami formed another company called Palcom, The Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles, the word Ninja wasnt allowed, was the first non-Nintendo created games to be pack-in, in a
Nintendo console set, at a retail price around US$142. Early 1991, Konami sent a memo to retailers: "Cowabungs! Check out what's ahead with your favourite reptilian money makers in March...". Along with the announcement of 2nd turtles movie was Konami's sequel to their first TMNT game, known as "the arcade game".
Over $60 million was spent on promotion and a tie-in for a free pizza was included with the purchase of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles "The Arcade game". Konami earned $300 million in 1991, making it the largest NES licensee and the eight-largest oftware company (microsoft being the largest). Eventhough Konami is one of the largest software companies, they still care a lot about each one of their fans. I once wrote Konami, back when I was starting NES WORLD in 1995, and asked them for material. A few weeks later I received this large envelope with old NES manuals, brochures and gameboxes. I'm not saying they'll do this if thousands asked, but it sure gave a couple of plus'es in my book.
There's been other cases with Konami where they've been extremely cool, such as when a friend of mine wanted to use the name Parodius for his own personal webserver, Konami allowed him to do so. Recently there has been a word about a dump of Konami's Castlevania X arcade game for emulator development purpose. Ofcourse Konami did everything to prevent it (and succeeded), but the way they tackled the situation is just amazing, leaving everyone positive about Konami. My first Konami game was Snake's Revenge, released by Ultra in America and by Konami themselves in Europe. I spent days on Snake's Revenge, until I finally reached the end.
The game was brand new back then and the retail price was around $70, but I felt my hard earned money was spent well. Next one was Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles, Released by Ultra in America and by Palcom in Europe. This game wasnt one of my favourites at first tho, I was a bit too old to care about four green ninja's and a rat, but I got kinda addicted to the game and the later levels are actually quite hard. A retail price of $35 wasnt too bad either. Thats about it, but I'd like to end this Konami Special with a greeting to Christian A. Munoz of Konami of America.
