THE RETRO GAMER GUIDE TO

WE LOOK BACK TO WHEN THE JAPANESE DEVELOPER WAS ONE OF THE LEADING PLAYERS IN THE 2D-OBSESSED ARCADE INDUSTRY

WORDS BY DARRAN JONES

When Konami announced that it would begin focussing on the lucrative mobile market instead of traditional console games in 2015 there was uproar from the videogame community, but ultimately the announcement was just Konami being Konami. After all, this was a company that started off in 1969 as a jukebox repairer and rental service. It gave that up in the late-Seventies when it moved into arcade videogames, and it’s looked for good opportunities to expand its business ever since.

In addition to making console games and the aforementioned mobile titles, Konami also creates the successful Yu-Gi-Oh! trading card game and runs health and physical fitness clubs across Japan, as well as pachinko and pachislot machines. It still remains a dominant player in the industry today, and it’s behind a number of big franchises, including Metal Gear, Silent Hill, Bomberman, Frogger and Castlevania. For the purpose of this feature, though, we’ll be concentrating on its early arcade games, focussing on the many 2D titles that helped turn it into a dominant force during the 16and 32-bit period. So join us as we replay some of Konami’s most beloved arcade games. How many of the following do you remember?

SPACE KING 1978

In the embryonic days of videogames it wasn’t always easy to come up with your own exciting game ideas, so it made more sense to just ‘borrow’ someone else’s. One of Konami’s earliest games was what we could generously refer to as an homage to Taito’s Space Invaders.

It’s admittedly a slightly nicer looking effort, thanks to some more detailed visuals, but it’s otherwise virtually identical to Taito’s game, right down to the mothership that occasionally zips across the top of the screen and the endless march of the invaders, which gets faster as more of them are shot down.

Konami would do exactly the same thing the following year with Space King 2, but it’s an even more brazen effort, featuring virtually identical sprites to Taito’s own sequel, Space Invaders Part II.

Fortunately for Konami, it soon began to stand on its own two feet. Greatness was just around the corner…

SCRAMBLE 1981

1981 is considered by many to be a golden year for arcade games. One of Konami’s best from the year is Scramble, which was one of the first shoot-’em-ups to feature forced scrolling. Taking place across a continually changing cityscape, it features a fantastic risk vs reward mechanic where you must destroy cylinders to top up your ever-decreasing fuel supply. Despite its success, it was only ported to the Vectrex and Tomy Tutor (although countless clones did appear on various home systems).

AMIDAR 1981

This enjoyable take on the maze genre tasks you with running around a set number of squares and rectangles and filling them in while avoiding numerous enemies. If you fill in all four corners of the level you’ll gain temporary invincibility and can chase your normally impervious foes. You can otherwise avoid your pursuers by forcing them to jump a limited number of times, so you can run under them.