History
The Konami Code was created by Kazuhisa Hashimoto, who was developing the home port of the 1985 arcade game Gradius, a scrolling shooter released on the NES in 1986. 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 (normally attained gradually throughout the game). The code was still present in the released Gradius after Kazuhisa forgot to remove it. Players discovered and shared the code. It has been included in the other sequels and spin-offs, including the SNES version of Gradius III, which actually destroys the player's ship upon entering the original code (however, substituting ← and → with the L and R triggers of the SNES controller powers up the ship), all the way through the most recent iteration of the series, Gradius Rebirth on the Wii, where the Wii Remote's 1 and 2 buttons fill in for A and B, respectively.
The code has been subsequently re-used in a large number of other games, and has found a place in popular culture as a reference to the third generation of video game consoles. For example, entering the code is one of two standard ways to put a Palm webOS device (such as the Palm Pre or Palm Pixi) into "developer mode", and the code is also present as an Easter egg on a number of websites. The code is also used in a variation where Start is replaced with ↑↑↑↑ for the command a PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360 user must use to reset their Netflix account on the Netflix application. In the build-up to his French presidential campaign, politician François Bayrou has referenced it on his official website, where entering the Konami code would unlock a hidden 8-bit style election video. The Konami code also appears in the animated series Gravity Falls, where the code is in the final frame of the show's intro sequence. ↑↑↓↓←→←→BASELECTSTART It appears again in the movie Wreck-It Ralph as the code King Candy uses it to enter the safe where the data code for the game Sugar Rush is kept. The code is also referenced in the anime OVA series Hellsing Ultimate when character, Jan Valentine, uses the code as an indication of which way he is shooting Hellsing guards, up and down being forward and behind. He also references the company after he finishes shooting by saying, "Bringing the mother fucking death by Konami."
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