To play Contra, players would stand in front of the TV screen and push the buttons. Each button, which was numbered from 1 to 8, had to be pressed one after the other and only once. To give you an idea of how difficult it was to play Contra with the Konami code, in its first week of release, the game sold a total of 400,000 copies. That’s less than one game for every kid in America. The Konami code, like any other cheat codes, was created to give players Video game hacks an advantage. It would come in handy when the game was really tough.
But why did the Konami code exist? Why did it become the most famous cheat code? There were several reasons for this. First, when the first version of the code was released, it was easy to remember because it was a series of numbers. For instance, Up-Up-Down-Down-Left-Right-Left-Right-B-A — a series of buttons that many kids had burned into their memory.
Second, when the code was introduced, no one thought of it as cheating. In fact, the idea of cheats was not yet popular.
But why was the Konami code so influential? For a start, it became the most recognizable cheat code. It made the Konami code famous.