Rural Dictionary

Konami

1.)Japanese word literally meaning "small wave".

2.)The name of a videogame company that has been known throughout its history to release high-quality videogames of all kinds of genres and systems. Konami is particularly well-known for such games as:
*Metal Gear
*Zone Of Enders
*Silent Hill
*Castlevania
*Contra
*Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
...among MANY other titles throughout its history, a lot of which happened to be pre-licensed. Konami should not be forgotten for having released a LOT of arcade games during the 80's, including pre-licensed games like The Simpsons & TMNT, both of which were awesome side-scrolling action games. Another arcade-only game, Vendetta, had a character named Hawk, who looked just like Hulk Hogan!
Today Konami continues to be the force behind multiple consoles, including the 128-bit systems and Gameboy Advance. Konami has a lot of cool titles, but their best happens to be Metal Gear Solid, ZOE, Silent Hill, and TMNT (well, this game flopped, but I sure do hope the sequel has much-needed improvements, as good as TMNT is).

"Konami rules. ^_^ but I miss the old wave logo they used to have above their logo....now it's replaced by a red-colored logo that resembles the end of a katana. -_- *sigh* I miss the old wave logo..."
-me

by Dave March 16, 2004

181👍 37👎

Konami

Once upon a time during the era of Nintendo's mega-popular console, the NES, there was a company named Konami.

This company had a developer named Hideo Kojima, who became the main face for Konami's most popular games at the time. Castlevania, Metal Gear, Contra, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. All popular among gamers and all go on to have popular sequels.

Although they lay dormant (with the exception of a Castlevania and TMNT game) during Nintendo's godlike SNES days, they exploded onto the scene at maximum velocity on the PSX.

Along with Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (highly acclaimed by fans and critics), they also released Metal Gear Solid, which revolutionized games by improving the concept of cinematic gaming beyond anything developers had done before (including SquareSoft). Along with these titles, Konami created many excellent series such as Winning Eleven, Dance Dance Revolution, Silent Hill, Suikoden, and Vandal Hearts.

However, it is even here that one can see the foreshadowing of Konami's future. On the N64, they released their first 3D Castlevania, but it turned out to be a failure. This failure was made all the more painful by the fact that their PSX Contra games were also failures.

Finally, with the arrival of the PS2, Konami unleased onto the world Metal Gear Solid 2...and it marked the beginning of the end. While a commercial success and received well by many critics, it was quickly realized that the success came from love of the original Metal Gear Solid on the PSX. This was made apparent when Metal Gear Solid 3 was released. It is all too obvious that your game is a failure when it sells for $10 to $20 on eBay while it is still $40 to $50 in stores.

The same situation occured for their other series, Silent Hill. Silent Hill 2 sold well due to timing and brand name, but Silent Hill 3 and Silent Hill 4 didn't fare nearly as well. In addition to these failures, there existed a problem of Konami continuously porting games a long time after they're already released (usually on PS2) on other consoles.

Now when you release a game, then it is good if you port it something like 4-5 or less months later. However, porting a game something like a year later is, surprisingly, not good. You see, by then, excitement over the game has died off. Also, if you plan on remaking an older game, you might want to try actually REMAKING it. See, Capcom's Resident Evil remake on the GameCube is a good idea of a remake. The graphics/gameplay/EVERYTHING changes somewhat. Taking a game, updating the graphics and adding changes from it's sequel doesn't constitute a good remake, unfortunately.

Also unfortunate is that Konami doesn't seem to be showing any indication of stopping. Some good news is that the new Castlevania on the PS2, which is 3D, is much better than the N64 one. In lieu of all the bad news, though, it doesn't seem to make much of a difference. Hopefully, Konami will clean up their act and improve their games, but for now, it seems like they're really depending on the Metal Gear Solid and Suikoden fanbase.

Konami: Long ago, they were one of the most consistently brilliant companies ever.

by BusinessMan April 17, 2005

11👍 69👎

konami

A game company based in Japan. They were once a top-notch full fledging game publisher and developer, producing innovative and fun video game titles. However, at the peak of 1997, Konami lost it's edge to other high developing game companies. Despite innovative titles during it's recent years, like Metal Gear Solid and DDR(Dance Dance Revolution), they failed to suffice as a high profile company outside of the occasional Castlevania release. Konami's creative games lost theier impact: Metal Gear Solid was hampered and withered some because of multiple "rehashes" such as the 2 different "Special Edition" releases such as MGS2:Sons of Liberty" and the re-release of their first game for the Gamecube, "MGS: Snake Eater". DDR has practically died thanks to over-marketing the arcade dancing game, not attracting enough arcade-goers (including regular players) with lack of any new innovation as far as gameplay goes as the versions went on (freeze steps were introduced, but were created and made famous first by Andamiro's Pump it Up), and lack of any sort of support from those who were dancing on Pump it Up, a game made by "rival" company Andamiro (based in Korea). Thanks to the last reason, diehard DDR addicts and Konami fanboys formed a small army to bash Pump it Up by giving it bad reviews on forums and disrespecting Pump players and Andamiro (Andamiro mostly for racist reasons: because they were Korean and not Japanese). Despite Konami's attempts to bring some of their past series out of the hole and trying to resurface DDR, the "remakes" of their old games fell into obscurity and DDR died in Japan by it's 8th "mix" and left the DDR fanboys dissapointed, angry, and rude to other dance sims (namely Pump it Up and Techno Motion). Aside from Castlevania amd Metal Gear Solid, Konami will never be the top-notch game developer they used to be and they now rely on there last big series', fanboys, and new titles.

-There is a game on the Best Buy shelf and it is developed by Konami.
-Konami made another rehash of "Metal Gear Solid".
-The Konami fanboy poked fun at the PUMP machine, unbeknowest to how stupid and immature he was for bashing an intimate object. The PUMP player talked some sense into the Konami fanboy.

by nikkan_hanil December 11, 2003

31👍 15👎