a sequence of button presses that he could easily remember that gave the ship he controlled in the game the full range of power-ups so that he could easily complete the game for in-house testing purposes. He had intended to remove the programming code for that sequence before the game was shipped, but the game had shipped with the code included. Some players of Gradius had discovered Hashimoto's sequence and reported it back to Konami, and it became popular to use Hashimoto's sequence in future Konami titles by other developers. Larger public awareness of this Konami code came with the worldwide popularity of Contra in 1988, in which entering the code gave the player additional lives. Since then, the Konami code is not only used across other video games from other developers and publishers in similar manners, but as Easter eggs in other forms of media. Notes References External links 1958 births 2020 deaths Japanese video game designers Japanese video game programmers Konami people