A Brief History of Konami

Founded as a jukebox repair company some five decades ago, Konami rapidly turned into one of Japan's most beloved publishers and developers of video games, giving the world the likes of Metal Gear, Castlevania, Contra, and more. But as the corporation became more and more distracted by profitable ventures outside of core gaming, its reputation began to collapse. Not that the company cares all that much. Today, Konami is a shadow of its former self to hardcore games consumers at the same time it's raking in record revenues and profits. So just what's going on over there, anyway? Well, to understand what's happening now, it's important we first go back and explore the past.

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Much of the gameplay seen in this video was captured for CLS. The following videos were also used, in part, in the creation of this episode of Side Quest:

   • Rocket League!! Secret code?  
   • Konami logo - Super NES "Purple Laser"  
   • Видео  
   • BRE∀K DOWN! / BeForU  
   • METAL GEAR SOLID 2: SONS OF LIBERTY (...  
   • Zone of the Enders HD Collection Offi...  
   • P.T. Silent Hills Concept Movie  
   • Death Stranding – E3 2016 Reveal Trai...  
   • Metal Gear Survive - Gamescom 2016 Re...  

Still imagery for this episode of Side Quest was garnered, in part, from the following sources: Amazon, Deviant Art, Dot Tech, eStarland, GaijinPot, Games Revisited, Glitchwave, Moby Games, NicePNG, Reddit, RegMedia, Success Story, Tumblr, Variety, Wikia, Wikimedia, Wikipedia, Win Condition Games, ytmig, and Zenius-I-Vanisher.

The following sources were cited while writing the script for this episode of Side Quest:

https://www.konami.com/corporate/en/h...
https://www.arcade-museum.com/manuf_d...
http://system16.com/chronology.php?id=5
http://gamebase.retrogames.com/game19...
https://www.arcade-museum.com/game_de...
https://www.digitalspy.com/videogames...
https://www.giantbomb.com/scramble/30...
https://www.giantbomb.com/gradius/303...
https://www.theverge.com/2012/1/17/27...
https://www.glitterberri.com/develope...
https://mashable.com/2013/08/30/konam...
https://tokensonly.com/2012/05/01/ste...
https://www.thewealthrecord.com/celeb...
https://www.konami.com/gaming/systems...
https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news...
https://www.konami.com/games/corporat...
https://www.konami.com/corporate/en/b... https://successstory.com/companies/ko...
https://watchusplaygames.wordpress.co...
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/...
https://www.polygon.com/2015/12/16/10...
https://www.polygon.com/2015/12/16/10...
https://kotaku.com/report-konami-is-t...
https://www.gamblinginsider.com/in-de...
https://variety.com/2018/gaming/news/...
https://www.gamerevolution.com/news/5...
https://successstory.com/companies/ko...