Konami is currently headquartered in Tokyo and additionally operates health and physical fitness clubs in Japan. Konami also operates United States activities in El Segundo, California for video games, and Paradise, Nevada for the gambling industry. The location in Paradise, Nevada is located across the street from one of the runways at McCarran International Airport.

History

On March 19, 1973, Kozuki transformed the business into Konami Industry Co., Ltd. and began work on manufacturing "amusement machines" for arcades. Their first actual game machine was not created until 1978. They began to achieve success with hit arcade games such as 1981's Frogger, Scramble, and Super Cobra.

Between 1982 and 1985, Konami manufactured and sold game software for home PCs, producing games for the MSX and Nintendo's Family Computer ("Famicom") game consoles. This new business was in addition to, not in place of, the arcades, and many hit console games of this time period were ports of the arcade versions. Konami of America Inc. was established in Torrance, California in 1982 but moved to Wood Dale, Illinois in 1984. Also in 1984, Konami expanded to the United Kingdom and established Konami Limited.

Konami began to achieve great success when the Famicom took off, being released in the United States as the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). Many of the NES/Famicom's bestselling titles were produced by Konami, including Gradius, the Castlevania series, the Contra series, and Metal Gear. Konami was one of the most active and prolific third party development studios for the NES, which led to conflict with Nintendo of America's licensing restrictions. During the heyday of the NES, Nintendo of America controlled the production of all licensed NES software titles, and limited third party developers to a maximum of five titles per year. Several companies found a way around this restriction by founding quasi-independent subsidiary corporations, effectively doubling the number of games that they could release during the year. In the case of Konami, this subsidiary was known as Ultra Games, and a large number of Konami titles were published in North America under their banner, including the original Metal Gear, Gyruss, Skate or Die, the first two Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles games and Snake's Revenge (an American-made Metal Gear sequel made specifically for the western market). In Europe, faced with a similar restriction placed by Nintendo's European branch, Konami established Palcom Software Ltd. to the same end. By the early 1990s, Nintendo of America had relaxed many of its licensing restrictions, and, no longer needed, Ultra was shut down in 1992, with the remainder of its staff being reabsorbed into Konami's official American branch.