Founder & Chairman · Konami · 1970s
Started a jukebox rental and repair business in Osaka in 1969, and turned it into the company that made Castlevania, Contra, Gradius and Metal Gear.
Konami began in 1969 in Toyonaka, Osaka, as a business that rented out and repaired jukeboxes. Its founder, Kagemasa Kōzuki, has remained the company's chairman ever since — an extraordinary continuity of ownership across more than half a century of an industry that has otherwise churned through its leadership several times over. Four years after founding it, Kōzuki restructured the business as Konami Industry Co., Ltd. and moved into manufacturing amusement machines for arcades. The success came quickly: Scramble, Super Cobra, and in 1981 Frogger, which made Konami a genuine international arcade force. The move onto Nintendo hardware is what turned that into an empire. A remarkable proportion of the NES's best-selling and best-regarded titles came out of Konami — Gradius, the Castlevania series, the Contra series, and Metal Gear among them — and the financial trajectory is startling: Konami's earnings grew from roughly $10 million in 1987 to $300 million in 1991. Within four years, a former jukebox repair company had become one of the largest video game publishers in the world, and its franchise list — Metal Gear, Silent Hill, Castlevania, Contra, Gradius, Tokimeki Memorial, Suikoden, Yu-Gi-Oh! — remains one of the strongest ever assembled.