Pro tip: Don't believe everything you read, the Konami Code edition

Will — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 08:00:00 +0000

Just about everyone knows about the ol' 'Konami Code'. It's even got its own Wikipedia entry. But for those that are too lazy to click the link, the gist is this: Starting with Gradius, a sequence of button presses (Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A) gave (in that game) lots of armaments. Since then it's found its way (sometimes with slight variations) into lots more games, most by Konami, with varying effects.

Somewhere along the line, though, the ubiquity of the code became something of a legend and it started popping up in other games. Wikipedia has a long list of such games, one of which caught my eye.

* 3-D World Runner (DOG, NES) - Pausing the game and entering Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A will cause a message to come up saying "I AM NOT KONANI".

I have the game, so I decided to give it a shot. I started a new game, paused it, entered the code and was greeted with this:

I thought that I might be having some problems with entering the code properly. Even though the NES Advantage is the best controller ever made, I sometimes have trouble hitting left or right without also hitting up or down, so I swapped out the Advantage for a smaller standard NES controller.

Started a new game, paused, entered the code and got this:

I was starting to feel a little frustrated, so I searched the Internet, looking for a picture that would corroborate this story and I found... Absolutely nothing! In fact, the only references I found to the code working in this game either just referenced the Wikipedia article or copied the info from it verbatim.

So, the lesson is: if something doesn't sound right, go out and test it! It may not be.

Pro Tip of the Day - worldrunner

Pro tip: Don't believe everything you read, the Konami Code edition