Ultra Games

Ghost Corp Apparel — resurrecting iconic corporate ghosts.

Founded in 1988 in Buffalo Grove, Illinois, Ultra Software Corporation was Konami of America’s alternate publishing label for the North American Nintendo market. Nintendo’s then-strict NES licensing program limited publishers’ annual output, so Konami gave its overflowing cartridge pipeline a second identity, a sharp Ultra logo, and a very convincing fake mustache.

Ultra’s first NES release was Metal Gear in 1988. The label went on to publish a distinctly late-’80s shelf of Konami software and licensed heavy hitters, including Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Snake’s Revenge, Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse, Mission: Impossible, and Game Boy releases such as Operation C. It also handled selected games developed outside Konami’s walls.

After the Super NES arrived in North America in 1991, Nintendo relaxed the publishing restrictions that had made Ultra useful. Konami folded the label back into its parent operation in 1992; Ultra Golf and World Circuit Series, released in March 1992, were among its final titles. The corporate workaround had completed its mission and quietly vanished into the cartridge fog.

Our Ultra Games collection celebrates the beautiful audacity of a side-label built to dodge a five-games-a-year bottleneck. It is for basement CRT champions, instruction-manual archaeologists, and anyone who recognizes that sometimes the most memorable corporate ghost wore a neon logo and shipped on gray plastic.