Top 10 Unbelievable Konami Fails

#10: Six Days in Fallujah

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This isn’t the first time that a video game has revolved around controversial themes, however not many companies would immediately cancel said project the second any backlash occurred. Developer Atomic Games was hard at work producing what they felt to be a highly realistic military shooter to contrast all of the more action-oriented series on the market. Since the game was based on a real conflict, many members of the press and war veterans slammed the game for being disrespectful. While we can understand this reaction from the public, we cannot excuse Konami for instantly backing out of the project the second the controversy kicked in, leaving Atomic Games with no support whatsoever. Not cool.

#9: Doing Zero Promotion for ‘Blades of Time’

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Right about now, you might be asking: ‘what the heck is Blades of Time?’…yeah, exactly. To sum it up, Blades of Time is a hack ‘n’ slash adventure game and a spiritual successor to the game ‘X-Blades’ released a few years earlier. The final product itself was a decent entry into the genre, but it unfortunately struggled sales wise due to a severe lack of proper promotional material being released to the gaming community. Sure, not every game has to have a butt-load of trailers for it but…here’s the real kicker, Konami only officially announced the game a whole three days after it came out. How?! Why?! Fail, fail, FAIL!

#8: Pro Evolution Soccer 2016 PC Port

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Porting games occasionally leads to speedbumps in the transition process, sure, but we are willing to accept little imperfections in comparison to the colossal train wreck that was the PES 2016 PC port. The PC version had a pitiful presentation with terrible character models, textures, animations and…well, yeah just about everything you see on-screen looked like barf. What makes this horrendous PC port all the more baffling is that its running on the FOX game engine. Sound familiar? It’s the same game engine used to power the graphically stunning MGSV. If the FOX engine could handle the massive terrain and chaotic action of that title…it can surely handle some soccer balls, right? You had ONE job, Konami.

#7: Silent Hill’s ‘Month of Madness’

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Imagine being a huge Silent Hill fan during March 2012. Konami announced their plans to release three Silent Hill titles over the spn of the month! Now imagine being a Silent Hill fan when all that exciting news fell flat on its face. Silent Hill Downpour was a clunky, boring addition to the franchise. Silent Hill: Book of Memories was…umm…we’re not even sure what the hell they were thinking. But the biggest slap in the face was the Silent Hill HD Collection, as it somehow butchered the original versions of the games with awkward new voice acting and ugly looking picture resolution. ‘Twas a month of madness alright, but not in a good way.

#6: E3 2010 Press Conference

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Konami’s E3 2010 conference is so hilariously awkward that we can’t even find the right words to summarize it. So, let’s just hit the (for lack of better words) ‘highlights’, shall we? How creepy was that dude just staring at the other guy? What the hell was up with that goofy wrestler ‘slapping’ routine? Not to mention the numerous technical difficulties and whatever was going on in ’99 Nights 2’ developer Tak Fujii’s mind while he was promoting his own game. We should honestly get a drinking game going for this press conference. Every time something stupid happens, take a swig of your drink and…actually, forget it, everyone would be passed out five minutes in.

Gaming is a very social medium, with the many players around the world enjoying the ability to freely express their enjoyment and concerns with the industry as a whole. Konami doesn’t share these feelings. Whenever anybody talks smack about one of their games or the company in general, Konami immediately jumps into action and shuts them down, completely censoring their freedom of speech. Two very prominent examples of this happening were when gaming journalist Jim Sterling and Youtube personality superbunnyhop were both slammed for criticizing the company for many of their missteps over the years.

One of the biggest slaps in the face in recent memory, this was a blunder of massive proportions. This looked like an excellent return to form for a series that, lets be frank, Konami was doing nothing with. It also had impressive talent forming together to bring it to life including Norman Reedus, Guillermo Del Toro and industry legend Hideo Kojima. Due to conflict with Kojima concerning the project, the company scrapped everything, causing this spooky gaming franchise to become silent once more. Salt in the wound, Konami removed P.T from the PS store permanently, the only thing that fans still had as a taste of what could have been. Yeah, f—k you too.

What’s worse than treating the entire gaming public outside of their company like crap? Well, treating everyone who works inside of their company like crap. There have been a number of stories making the rounds over the years of the near torturous experience it is to work at Konami. It reportedly feels like a dictatorship, with unfair regulations and cruel harassment from the higher ups of the company. The harshness and strict policy within Konamiis so bad, that after Koji Igarashi’s latest Castlevania for the Nintendo DS failed sales wise, he was forced down from the position of a game producer to a desk job as punishment.

Remember all that drama we mentioned about Kojima and Konami concerning Silent Hills? Well it didn’t stop there. During much of the production of MGSV, Konami made things extremely difficult for Kojima, constantly butting heads with his creative vision for the game. Despite his best efforts to ensure the game’s quality, a large portion of its content had to be cut, causing Hideo to be understandably frustrated. What really blew Kojima’s fuse and eventually led him to leaving the company altogether was when Konami made the petty move of denying him access to the 2015 Game Awards show. Kojima is an amazing talent in the field and it was a big mistake to push him away. If you think things can’t get any worse, we’ll reveal our biggest Konami fail after a few honorable mentions… Poor Promotion for ‘Metal Gear Solid HD Collection’ Metal Gear Survive

#1: Turning Their Franchises into Pachinko Machines

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Let’s recap on the plethora of big gaming franchises that Konami has amassed over its many years in the industry. They have the rights to Silent Hill, Castlevania, Contra and Metal Gear. So instead of releasing proper, full fledged experiences of those series, what have they decided to do? They take the likeness of said franchises and slap them onto Pachinko machines, to make a quick profit off of the gambling scene. Wow. Not only is it disrespectful to their products and exposes them for being incredibly greedy, it shows a level of complete ignorance towards what their fans actually want. Gamers think E.A and Ubisoft are bad?