Kazuhisa Hashimoto, creator of the Konami Code, has died

Kazuhisa Hashimoto, the creator of the famous ‘Konami Code’, has died at the age of 61, according to a former colleague.

Hashimoto was a programmer, designer and producer at Konami during the 80s and 90s and worked on classic titles such as Snatcher, ISS and Gradius.

But his greatest legacy is the Konami Code, a string of button inputs first used in the NES version of Gradius.

Finding the game too difficult to play through during testing, Hashimoto created a cheat code to give the player a full set of power-ups. It was later decided to leave the code in the retail release of the game, since Konami believed it was too hard to enter accidentally during gameplay.

Hashimoto explained in a 2003 interview (via Nintendo Life): “I had one guy under me, and he played through the coin-op version [of Gradius]. That one’s really tough. I hadn’t played that much and obviously couldn’t beat it myself, so I put in the Konami Code.

“Because I was the one who was going to be using it, I made sure it was easy to remember.

“The game took around half a year to develop, and, at the time, putting the code together was like an entertaining puzzle. ‘How on earth am I going to be able to fit these passwords into the program?’ I’d ask myself.”

The Konami Code, as it would later become known, became a hallmark of virtually all of the company’s releases for the following decades.

The code features in hundreds of video games, including non-Konami titles and modern day blockbusters such as Fortnite, Rocket League and League of Legends.

The Konami code is also arguably a piece of pop culture in its own right, having been used to access secret settings on Netflix, been referenced by Amazon’s Alexa and mentioned in Disney’s Wreck it Ralph movie.