Konami code creator Kazuhisa Hashimoto has passed away at 61

Kazuhisa Hashimoto, creator of the Konami code, has passed away at the age of 61.

Revealed through a tweet by a former colleague of Hashimoto, the Japanese programmer passed away last month. No cause of death has been revealed.

“Programmer Kazuhisa Hashimoto, the creator of the Konami command “Top, Bottom, Left, Right, Left, and Right BA”, died last night,” reads the tweet.

“During my tenure, I had never had a team with me, but I had a friendly exchange with the company and had a friendly atmosphere. As someone who got on the same boat and shared a little time, this obituary was a bit painful. Please keep making games in heaven. Thank you very much.”

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— TECHNOuchi a.k.a. missingsoul/Mr.YT (@TECHNOuchi) February 26, 2020

Hashimoto worked at Konami throughout the 80s and 90s, working on some of Konami’s most revered titles, including Gradius and Snatcher. However, the Japanese programmer’s legacy still rests behind the iconic Konami code.

“I had one guy under me, and he played through the coin-op version [of Gradius],” the developer revealed in an interview from 2003. “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.”

“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.”

Source: VGC