Konami

Konami Corporation (コナミ株式会社, Konami Kabushiki-gaisha?) (TYO: 9766 NYSE: KNM SGX: K20) is a leading developer and publisher of numerous popular and strong-selling toys, trading cards, anime, tokusatsu, slot machines, arcade cabinets and video games. Konami is famous for games such as the Metal Gear series and Silent Hill series. The company was founded in 1969 as a jukebox rental and repair business in Osaka, Japan, by Kagemasa Kōzuki, the still-current chairman and chief executive officer. The name "Konami" is a conjunction of the names Kagemasa Kōzuki, Yoshinobu Nakama, Hiro Matsuda, and Shokichi Ishihara, who were partners acquired by Kozuki and the original founders of Konami Industry Co., Ltd in 1973. Konami also can mean "small wave(s)" in the Japanese language and also can mean "fool friend(s)" in the French language. Konami is represented by the goroawase number "573". "Five" in Japanese is go, changed to the voiceless form ko; "7" in Japanese is nana shortened to na; "3" in Japanese is mittsu, shortened to mi; "573" = ko-na-mi. This number appears in many Konami telephone numbers and as a high score in Konami games like Dance Dance Revolution as an example; in some other games like Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow, the number is occasionally used as minor self-reference to the company.

Konami is currently headquartered in Tokyo and additionally operates health and physical fitness clubs in Japan. Konami also operates United States activities in El Segundo, California for video games, and Paradise, Nevada for the gambling industry. The location in Paradise, Nevada is located across the street from one of the runways at McCarran International Airport.

Source: Wikipedia