Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A. You recognized it, of course: it’s the quintessential key sequence, the Holy Grail of video game cheats, the famous Konami Code. It has appeared in hundreds of titles, even those not produced by the company itself, becoming a milestone that any somewhat classic gamer should know. But its existence is purely by chance, a mistake that should never have happened and that at the time made some people throw their hands up in disbelief. This is how myths are not made!
Code against bugs
It all started when Konami decided to bring its arcade Gradius, an outstanding space shooter game, to the NES. This port had its problems, of course: being less powerful than the arcade machines, some levels had to be simplified, the upgrades for the ship went from four to two, and, in general, it was noticeable that it wasn’t exactly the same experience. However, it had something that made it special: a secret that allowed you to get all the upgrades for your ship immediately. Hint: it started with “up, up, down, down”.
It was Kazuhisa Hashimoto, the person responsible for the port, who introduced the code into the programming as a simple way to make the work of one of his testers easier, who could not progress due to how demanding it was: he decided that, to test the game, they could use this code on the pause screen and turn their ship into something almost indestructible, thus allowing them to focus exclusively on fixing the bugs and glitches in the game. There was only one problem: as the title progressed through the various programming phases… They forgot to remove it. After all, it was easy enough for the programmers to know about it and complex enough that no one would activate it by accident.
It was Konami itself that revealed the code in interviews, and magazines of the time began to echo it. However, it became brutally famous with the release of Contra. In fact, during those years it was called the Contra Code, known (rightly so) for giving 30 lives all at once: a little nod to the most dedicated gamers of the time. From then on, everyone started using the code in question, from classic games like Tetris (on NES you could change any piece for an elongated one, once per game) to more modern ones like Hollow Knight: Silksong, where it unlocks an ultra-hard mode with permanent death.
In fact, it has even been used to unlock features in the Netflix menu or in the Opera browser, or on the Bank of Canada website! Hashimoto, over the years, was not only proclaimed as the creator of the ultimate easter egg, but he was also behind titles like The Goonies or the International Superstar Soccer saga. Sadly, this mythical figure in the history of the industry passed away on February 25, 2020, at the age of 61 (although some insist that he was actually 79), taking with him a piece of geek history like few others.