The 1980s were a simpler time in game development, so it only stands to reason that one of the most iconic developments in gaming from the era would be justified by a simple cause. In a 2003 interview translated this week by GlitterBerri, Kazuhisa Hashimoto explains that he added the original Konami Code to the NES port of Gradius because he "hadn’t played that much and obviously couldn’t beat it [himself]."

Since that innocent addition way back in 1986, the Konami Code has figured in countless games (and even Palm's webOS software), aiding players by granting them power-ups or supercharged abilities. As such, it stands as the best known cheat code in the history of gaming, proliferating across platforms, eras, and playing styles. Its inception is only part of the fascinating content in this interview, however, as Hashimoto also delves into the limitations of coding games with only two megabits of memory to work with. While that was a challenging experience for the former Konami man, he still longs for what he dubs the Nintendo era, a time when only a few programmers were responsible for the entire design of a game and could therefore feel a real sense of ownership over it.