“There was a period, before my Father died, where I thought I'd become an artist, but my Father died very suddenly when I was 13. My family was full of artists, you see, and they hadn't been able to make a living off of it.”
Kojima said in 2003 that his road to Konami began with early ambitions to make films and, before his father died suddenly when Kojima was thirteen, to become a painter; his family was full of artists who had not been able to make a living from their art, so he decided to go to university —having hardly studied for the entrance exam— and spent four years loafing and writing short stories. With so much free time he began going to the arcade, where he found Namco’s Xevious, Konami’s Hyper Olympics and something called Pooyan, and it was through that last title that he learned of Konami’s existence. When he went looking for work he visited several game companies and found the same youthful atmosphere everywhere: people whose original dreams had failed —frustrated manga artists, musicians from broken bands — but full of energy. Konami’s main offices were then in Kobe, on Port Island, which he thought was the best place to work, and for his generation Port Island was also a good place to go on dates.
“They had Namco's Xevious there, along with Konami's Hyper Olympics (Track and Field) and something called Pooyan. "Wow, there's a company out there that gives their games such on-the-nose names as Pooyan?"—that was how I learned of Konami's existence. [...] At that time, Konami's main offices were located in Kobe, on Port Island.”