In 1991 alone, Konami released these games, according to wikipedia:
Amstrad CPC:
Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles: The Coin Op
Arcade:
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time
The Simpsons
Sunset Riders
Roller Games
Golfing Greats
Thunder Cross II
Vendetta
Detana!! Twinbee (Japan only)
Escape Kids
Xexex
Mario Roulette
Slime Kun
Tsurikko Penta
C64:
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Arcade Game/Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles: The Coin Op
The Simpsons: Arcade Game
Amiga:
Bill Elliott's NASCAR Challenge
Predator 2
Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles: The Coin Op
Famicom/NES:
Wai Wai World 2: SOS!! Parsley Jō
Yume Penguin Monogatari
Ski or Die
Laser Invasion
Lagrange Point
Base Wars
Crisis Force
The Lone Ranger
Where in Time Is Carmen Sandiego?
Pirates!
Rampart
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III: The Manhattan Project
Tiny Toon Adventures
Bill Elliott's NASCAR Challenge
PC:
J.R.R. Tolkien's Riders of Rohan
Killing Cloud
Mission: Impossible
Spacewrecked: 14 Billion Light Years From Earth
The Simpsons: Arcade Game
The Simpsons: Bart's House of Weirdness
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Arcade Game/Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles: The Coin-Op!
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Manhattan Missions
Top Gun: Danger Zone
SNES:
The Legend of the Mystical Ninja
Super Castlevania IV
x68000:
Parodius Da!
Detana!! TwinBee
ZX Spectrum:
Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles: The Coin Op
PC Engine:
Gradius
Salamander
Gameboy:
Operation C
Bill Elliott's NASCAR Challenge
Double Dribble
Cave Noire
Castlevania II: Belmont's Revenge
Blades of Steel
Nemesis II (called Gradius: The Interstellar Assault in North America.)
Ganbare Goemon: Sarawareta Ebisumaru!
Handheld games:
Bucky O'Hare
Garfield
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3 Shredder's Last Stand
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Basketball
(no games by Konami for the Mega Drive prior to 1992, surprisingly)
I mean, wow, that's 61 games in a year... One game every 5 days. And they are mostly great or good games, well programmed, good music and graphics. What was going on exactly?
They probably had 100 people working there.
...or more. And many of those games may have been contracted out too.
Those things, and working overtime as a rule rather than exception.
FrankenGraphics wrote:
working overtime as a rule rather than exception.
I seem to recall that when Nintendo was working with Argonaut, they were baffled and annoyed that the Brits would simply
quit at the end of the regular work day.
Perhaps their relationship with Rare was so good because Rare didn't do that...
FrankenGraphics wrote:
Those things, and working overtime as a rule rather than exception.
Which makes me wonder who played all those games released in japan since people are expected to work 55+ hours a week there.
Anything on home computers / PCs except for the X68000 was programmed in the USA/Europe by contract developers. Those can be quickly excluded.
I think in an interview in Super Play maybe, Factor 5 mentioned that Konami had like 400 employees (or was it "developers"?) in the early 90s. They are / were a big company in the games world.
93143 wrote:
who played all those games
I can only think in kids, unemployed people and people who don't need or don't want to work so much.
93143 wrote:
Perhaps their relationship with Rare was so good because Rare didn't do that...
That made me laugh. Thank you.
Each employee did the "Konami code" many time?
Go hide in my corner since the complete room is now frozen. ^^;;;
Also some of the releases you listed are simple ports to new platforms of games they already did, so it's less work, and perhaps they could even outsource it.
Also you didn't mention it, but not only Konami did many games, but many great games. That's what makes them really deserve respect in my opinion. Releasing lots of shitty games isn't really an achievement (hem hem... Action 52...)
In the west they had to create companies such as Ultra Games or Palcom Software just to release Konami games, as Nintendo limited releases to a couple of games per companies per year.
Bregalad wrote:
Also you didn't mention it, but not only Konami did many games, but many great games.
Yeah, I mentioned that!
Ah sorry I didn't read the post past the long list of games... sorry agin, you definitely mentionned it.
The C64 ports where done my Mirage Studios USA
https://www.lemon64.com/games/details.php?ID=2612 the other home ports to non-Japanese systems would have also been not done by Konami.
On the NES/FC list, I know Pirates! was developed by Rare (there's some crazy mid-scanline effects going on in there), and Bill Elliot and Carmen Sandiego were by Distinctive Software. Even still, that's a lot of titles.
Fisher wrote:
93143 wrote:
who played all those games
I can only think in kids, unemployed people and people who don't need or don't want to work so much.
Yeah mostly kids, students (that weren't cramming for an entrance exam) and housewives I think.
Companies that use their employers a lot are called "black companies" in Japan. It seems there are still a lot of them, but it isn't as bad now as it used to be. In my company we can even leave at 17:00 as long as we don't have any unfinished things to do. If you have a deadline coming however you end up staying late a lot, and you don't get paid for overtime usually (you can get extra days off as compensation, but you have to apply for it).
Jesus christ, remember how awesome Konami used to be?
Just from the list nesrocks posted in the original post, the following games I would rate somehwere between good, great and timeless classic. If there is any of these games you have never played, get going:
nesrocks wrote:
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time
The Simpsons
Sunset Riders
Thunder Cross II
Vendetta
Detana!! Twinbee
Xexex
Yume Penguin Monogatari
Lagrange Point
Crisis Force
The Lone Ranger
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III: The Manhattan Project
Tiny Toon Adventures
The Legend of the Mystical Ninja
Super Castlevania IV
Operation C
Cave Noire
Castlevania II: Belmont's Revenge
Nemesis II
And that's excluding the ports of course. Worth mentioning in that context is that the two ports for PC Engine (Gradius and Salamander, done inhouse at Konami) are actually improvements over the arcade originals!
On the other hand though, the working conditions at Konami seems beyond awful. Don't know if that was already the case by 1991 - probably not as I can't imagine empolyees which are basically slaves doing a work of so high quality.
Back then there was no internet, TV had 3~4 channels that were rubbish, books were expensive. VHS tapes also expensive. You had to stand in a line at a bank while they were open ( they closed at 4pm) and fill in a slip to get money out, so when you ran out of money that was it you just had to go home. No ATMs. So you would have a lot of free time to yourself and not much else to do..
In Japan you still have to go and stand in line to the bank to pay bills and stuff. In fact most paperwork requires you to go to various offices and takes a lot of time in general. There are ATMs though.
In Sweden you can do most things from home using internet services, but the few times you really need to go to a bank is a pain, and most bank offices don't even handle cash anymore.
Oziphantom wrote:
Back then there was no internet [...] So you would have a lot of free time to yourself and not much else to do..
What are you talking about ? There obviously was (and there still is) lots of great things to do before without computers or internet, and all the time people spend on the net today would be spent doing other interesting things IRL. Also, my remark was : Since people are expected to work 60 hours per day, how can they have the time to play games at all ? Whether there is internet or not does not change this question - since people had no free time it does not matter whether they'd get bored in their free time without internet.
Students are just as much expected to spend their "free time" studying, not to mention many also have side jobs (according to mangas/animes at least) to earn some cash, so their problem would be the same as full grown adults. Remember, if my understanding is correct this japanese system works entierely out of social pressure rather than an actual, formal obligation. They have to work 40 hours per week, but if they don't do at least 60 everyone else in their company will call them a pussy with all the nasty consequences this have for their carreer. It would be the same for students. Also, the same for holydays - technically employees are granted some holydays as this is a legal obligation, but in practice if they use them, they're called pussies and might loose their job or similar. Even if their job is not at danger in a country where honor is your #1 concern you don't want anybody else to call you a pussy, period. I might have misunderstood the system but that's what I understood.
So this leaves only retired people and young childern with time to play games, but many games are not appropriate for young children.
HR might autocorrect "a pussy" to "not a team player". With that out of the way:
A longer work week might also help explain the association of popular E and E10+ rated product identities (such as
Mario and
Sonic) with Japanese developers and the association of popular M rated product identities (such as
Call of Duty and
Grand Theft Auto) with North American and European developers.
Pokun raised an issue entirely unrelated to Konami's prolific video game output. I replied about cashless society in
another topic.
I know people who are high school students and they definitely have a lot of more time than I do, and my workplace isn't even a "black company" (by Japanese standards, in Sweden it would be questionable). Third grade high school students are the exception, they often have to quit their club activities and stuff to focus on their university entrance exam. It probably also depends on the person a lot. People who are very serious might never play games and always study even from a young age, other people focus on sports or club activities and have little time for that reason. But those kinds of people might be less interested in games anyway. Also I think when you have less free time, you get good at not wasting your free time you do have.
Yes the system works by social pressure and unwritten rules. The law says you shouldn't need to work more than 8 hours a day and you have right to 10 days of paid holiday a year, but in practice this is usually much less depending on the workplace. At my place we can use up all 10 days as long as you don't use them all in a row (saying this makes most Swedish people drop their jaw in disbelief, having 4 weeks in a row is normal in Sweden). Especially if you, like me, seldom take days off and never is sick. The boss just can't complain when I do need to take a day or two off.
Pokun wrote:
At my place we can use up all 10 days as long as you don't use them all in a row [...] Especially if you, like me, seldom take days off and never is sick. The boss just can't complain when I do need to take a day or two off.
Wow... what a nightmare it sounds. This is probably actually hurting the economy, as people will be significantly more efficient after a week of vacation, and probably comes with new fresh ideas. Without vacations people probably will just become semi-depressed and be terribly inneficient at work.
Personally I don't have much trouble with it so far as I'm in good health. In fact one reason I wanted to work in Japan is because Sweden is a bit too soft (for example we have 10 weeks of summer vacation in school, enough to forget everything you've learned), I wanted to experience some danger and adventure. Besides as I said many times, my company is very white by Japanese standards and Japanese standards aren't as black as they used to be.
Most of my co-workers are considerably older than me, and must therefore have been around when everything was black, and almost all of them are fans of video games like Mario or Dragon Quest, and some of them still play games. So they must have had time to play these games at some point.