Oh, Konami. For a studio loaded withclassic video game IPs,their fall from grace has been remarkable. From their very disappointing (and very public) falling out with legendary creator Hideo Kojima and the subsequent cancellation of his highly-anticipatedSilent Hillsgame to the few ill-advised releases they’ve put out since (Metal Gear: Surviveanyone?), it’s been a rough decade for the Japanese developer. Konami is hanging on by a thread with the gaming community and has chosen to focus their attention more on Pachinko machines and NFTs than triple-A video games.
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Gamers have been waiting patiently for the big guns at Sony or Microsoft to pony up the cash and buy Konami’s stagnant IPs from them. As of this writing, such a purchase has not come to pass. While theallure of a newSilent Hill,Castlevania,orMetal Geargame is potent, there are plenty of other titles under the Konami banner that has long been forgotten. Here are the best Konami games that continue to be underrated by the gaming community.
8Suikoden
Konami’s response to thesuccessofFinal Fantasy,theSuikodenseries hasn’t seen a mainline release since 2006 (and nothing at all since 2012), and it’s a shame because they brought their own twist to the JRPG market that hasn’t been replicated since.
The originalSuikodenwas one of the most successful RPGs available on the original PlayStation, which is impressive considering the massive amount ofclassic RPGs released for that console.It boasted a massive array of playable characters (78 in total), a fantastic soundtrack, stunningly detailed pixel art for its time, and a complex narrative that didn’t shy away from asking players difficult moral questions. It still stands as one of the best JRPGs of all time, and a series revival is long overdue.
7Gradius V
The originalGradiuswas released way back in 1985, and it defined the space shooter genre that took over arcade machines for the next decade. The series made the move to consoles and struggled to find the same audience, but Konami still gave the franchise its due with four sequels. A side-scrolling space adventure that pioneered the idea of bullet hell, there isan appetite in today’s marketfor this kind of game.
The most recent entry in the series was 2004’sGradius V, which was outsourced by Konami rather than being developed internally. It was a gorgeous, challenging bullet-hell shooter with an epic sci-fi soundtrack, and was considered a rejuvenation of theGradiusbrand at the time. Sadly, the series hasn’t seen another installment since.
6Zone Of The Enders
The fastest mech game around, many players would never have looked twice atZone Of The Endersback in 2001 had it not come with a pre-order bonus that included a demo disc forMetal Gear Solid 2. Both games were Hideo Kojima titles though, and hearing the Metal Gear creator’s name attached to a third-person hack-and-slash shooter starring flying mech robots would be all it would take to sell a new entry in the series these days. Unfortunately, back in 2001, it was simply considered the world’s most expensive demo disc.
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As it stands,Zone Of The Enders: The 2nd Runner, released in 2003, is the most recent entry in the series, although both games received HD remasters for PS3 and Xbox 360 in 2012. It’s too bad, because these games controlled like a dream, with the ability to launch a volley of rockets and swing a laser sword at the same time while swooping around at high speeds.
5Bloody Roar
A long-forgotten fighting game,Bloody Roarentered a market saturated with gamesakin toStreet FighterandMortal Kombat,and struggled to generate an audience of its own. It had all the gameplay and graphical designs to stand level with its competitors, but the game lacked its own sense of style, which was eventually its undoing. That didn’t stop Euro-pop band Eiffel 65 from including it in their 2000 single “My Console” though.
What madeBloody Roarunique was that each of its characters had a standard set of fighting moves, but each also had the ability to transform into a unique animal, which gave them a second set of attacks. It was a cool idea, befitting of an era whereBeast WarsandAnimorphssaw success with a similar concept, but the game didn’t catch on in the same way.
4Adventure Island
This game was originally an adaptation of the arcade gameWonder Boy. Essentially a Mario clone,Adventure Islandpioneered enough of its own ideas to warrant a dedicated player base at its height. The most recent release in the series wasAdventure Island: The Beginningon the Wii in 2007. It was a somewhat uneven glimpse at how the series could transition to a 2.5D game.
Adventure Islandwas one of the first platformers to incorporate a health bar. While players would still lose a life for getting hit by an enemy, there were also obstacles littering the game’s levels that could decrease the hero’s health if they weren’t avoided. The game’s protagonist, Master Higgins, became a mascot for the Hudson Soft company, and the series was absorbed when Konami bought the company in 2012. Unfortunately,Adventure Islandnever found much traction in the West, and it’s likely the series has seen its last release.
3Boktai: The Sun Is In Your Hand
Remember when games had weird real-world mechanics programmed into them? The Psycho Mantisboss fight inMetal Gear Solidis one example, where players had to unplug their controller from Port 1 and plug it into Port 2 to fight the boss. These ideas have long been done away with, but there was a time when merging video games with the real world was attempted in various creative ways.
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When it came to the GameBoy Advance releaseBoktai: The Sun Is In Your Hand, that idea was solar power. Specifically, the game’s main character was a vampire hunter who wielded a gun powered by the sun. To recharge the gun in-game, players had to use actual sunlight. Literally, there was a light sensor on the back of the game’s cartridge, and players were encouraged to play the game in direct sunlight. This was another game worked on by Hideo Kojima, so that kind of quirkiness isn’t surprising. The game did well enough to warrant two sequels on the GBA, both of which used the light sensor mechanic. Then the series was rebranded asLunar Knightswhen it made the jump to the Nintendo DS, and the light sensor mechanic was ditched in the process.
2The Adventures Of Batman And Robin
Kids growing up in the 90s probably have fond memories ofBatman: The Animated Series. To this day, it remains one of the most iconic representations of the Caped Crusader, so much so that voice actors Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill reprised their roles as Batman and The Joker inRocksteady’s Arkham series.
However, those fans may not remember that there was a 1995 Sega Genesis and SNES platformer released alongside that Batman series.The Adventures Of Batman And Robinstyled itself after the TV show, designing each level to be an “episode” with a particular Batman villain acting as a boss to close them out. Players could play as both Batman and Robin, and make use of a number of cool gadgets like Batman’s grapple, as well as a very early incarnation of night vision.
1Contra
Contrais the only game on this list to have a new mainline release in the last 5 years. Unfortunately, 2019’sContra: Rogue Corpslikely contributed more to the series being forgotten than it did to its rejuvenation.Contrais known for its absolutely brutal difficulty, as well as its embracing of the 80s and 90s sci-fi aesthetic of muscular heroes with big guns. When at its best, there are few games more satisfying to beat.
The series was a fusion of two types of games: a platformer not unlikeMarioand a bullet hell shooter likeGradius. The two ideas merged to fantastic effect.Contragained itself a fiercely-loyal following due to the highly-demanding nature of its gameplay that made players retry levels over and over before succeeding. Some players weren’t turned off by that though. Fans of the series will often rankContra III: The Alien Warsas one of thegreatest Konami gamesof all time.
