Konami

	Date of Formation:	March 19, 1969 (as jukebox company)
	Location:	Tokyo
	President:	Yoichi Wada
	Head Composer:	Akira Yamaoka, Michiru Yamane, Kazuki Muraoka
	Productions:	Gradius, Castlevania, Metal Gear, Contra, Twinbee Suikoden, Silent Hill, Tokimeki Memorial, Bemani

Konami started off as a jukebox company but transformed into an Arcade production company 1973. Following successes like Frogger, Scramble, and Super Cobra, they developed the shooter Gradius in 1985 that was a best-seller across Japan. With subsequent hits like the NES' Castlevania, MSX's Metal Gear, and Arcade's Contra, Twinbee, and Salamander, they became one of the biggest video game developers. More recent hits have included the Suikoden, Silent Hill, and Tokimeki Memorial series as well as a long line of music games such as Dance Dance Revolution, pop'n music, beatmania, and GuitarFreaks uncovered here.

The company's music team has been consistently large since the 1980s. Often under the name Konami Kukeiha Club, employees tended to work collaboratively on projects and under pseudonyms, so there were relatively few stars formed. Nevertheless, Miki Higashino, who led the Gradius series, and Motoaki Furukawa, who founded the company's in-house band Kukeiha Club, came to prominence. Other significant but lesser known names during the period include Mutsuhiko Izumi, Masahiro Ikariko, Hidenori Maezawa, Tomoya Tomita, Kenichi Matsubara, Yuji Takenouchi, Seiichi Fukami, Kazuhiko Uehara, Masahiro Ikariko, Kinuyo Yamashita, and Tsuyoshi Sekito.

In recent years, Konami has produced some of the most technologically commanded and musically significant music to feature in video games. They have established star composers such as Metal Gear Solid's Norihiko Hibino, Silent Hill's Akira Yamaoka, and Castlevnia's Michiru Yamane. Other prominent names include techno artist Sota Fujimori, Hideo Kojima's sound director Kazuki Muraoka, and Suikoden composer Norikazu Miura. Commercially, they are only behind Nintendo, Sega, and Namco Bandai in sales and have recently acquired Hudson Soft. They are producing several major next-generation titles with highly anticipated scores.