Konami

Konami is one of Japan's best known video game companies, with a history stretching back to the earliest years of the commercial video game industry. Unlike many publishers associated with 1980s home computers, Konami survived the transition through successive generations of arcade machines, home computers and consoles to become a major international entertainment company.

The business was founded by Kagemasa Kozuki in Osaka, Japan, on 21 March 1969. According to Konami's own corporate history, Kozuki initially established the business as a jukebox rental and repair operation. The company was formally incorporated as Konami Industry Co., Ltd. on 19 March 1973, with capital of one million yen, and began manufacturing amusement machines for arcades.

During the remainder of the 1970s, Konami expanded its amusement business and began looking overseas. In 1979, it started exporting products to the United States, an important early step towards becoming an international games company. Konami's corporate history documents the company's expansion throughout this period.

The early 1980s saw Konami increasingly concentrate on electronic games. It became particularly successful as an arcade developer and publisher, producing titles such as Frogger, Scramble, Super Cobra and Time Pilot. Many Konami arcade games were subsequently licensed or converted for numerous home computer and console systems, greatly increasing the company's international recognition.

Konami itself records October 1982 as the point at which it expanded into the personal computer games business. The following month it established Konami of America, Inc., giving the company a permanent presence in the United States. In December 1983, Konami expanded into software for the Japanese MSX computer standard.

Europe soon followed. In May 1984, Konami Ltd. was established in the United Kingdom. Later that year the company also entered Nintendo's Family Computer market in Japan and established a German operation in December. Konami was therefore rapidly developing from an arcade manufacturer into an international publisher operating across arcade, computer and console markets.

The company's games also reached considerably smaller computer platforms during this period. This included the Tatung Einstein, for which surviving software collections record the Konami Four Game Arcade compilation as a Konami release. The Tatung Einstein archive lists the title in both its software collection and games catalogue. It also records Super Cobra, based upon Konami's arcade game, with Konami and Sharwood Services associated with the Einstein release.

By the second half of the 1980s, Konami had become substantially larger than the small software houses responsible for much of Britain's early home computer software. It was listed on the Osaka Securities Exchange in 1984, and in August 1988 moved onto the First Section of both the Tokyo and Osaka stock exchanges. The company had also established dedicated development and distribution facilities as its software business expanded.

Konami continued to grow throughout the following decades and became responsible for some of the industry's most recognisable game series. These included Castlevania, Contra, Gradius, Metal Gear, Silent Hill, Pro Evolution Soccer, Dance Dance Revolution and Yu Gi Oh!, among many others.

The company itself also changed considerably. Konami Industry Co., Ltd. became Konami Co., Ltd. in 1991 and subsequently Konami Corporation in 2000. Its interests expanded beyond conventional video games into areas including arcade entertainment, gaming machines, trading cards and sports businesses.

Today the parent company is known as Konami Group Corporation. It remains headquartered in Japan and operates through a group of subsidiaries covering digital entertainment, arcade games, gaming systems and sports. Konami's official corporate information records more than 9,000 consolidated employees as of 2026, demonstrating the extraordinary growth of a business that began as a small jukebox rental and repair operation more than half a century earlier.

For owners of 1980s computers, however, Konami is perhaps best remembered for the period when its distinctive arcade games began appearing in the home. Its presence on systems ranging from internationally successful machines to comparatively uncommon computers such as the Tatung Einstein illustrates just how widely Konami's games and licences spread during the decade. What began as a Japanese amusement business had, by the end of the 1980s, developed into one of the world's major video game publishers.

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