Treasure founder and president Masato Maegawa dreamed of working in the video game industry when he was young and began learning computer programming in junior high school. He studied programming in college and was hired by developer and publisher Konami after graduating. At Konami, Maegawa and associates that would later establish Treasure worked on a variety of games including arcade titles "The Simpsons" (1991) and "Bucky O'Hare" (1992), and Super NES games "Super Castlevania IV" (1991), "" (1992), and "Axelay" (1992). In 1991, Maegawa and several other Konami employees began planning an original game that would become "Gunstar Heroes" (1993)"," but their concept was rejected by Konami. Maegawa and his team were growing frustrated with Konami's growing reliance on sequels to established franchises such as their "Castlevania" and "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" series. The team felt consumers wanted original games, and so they left Konami in 1992 to establish Treasure and continue development on "Gunstar Heroes".