Gradius was no stranger to ports and versions of the game, so why would it be weird if Konami featured noodles inside the NES flavor? The year was 1986 and Konami decided to promote the instant noodles brand Arukimendesu / Archimendes, which literally means “instant noodles to walk/to go”. How, you ask? Well, this version of the game has Archimendes noodle packages instead of power-ups…
And a strange message at the end:
OMEDETO!
KEY WORD WA
‘GAME SNACK ARCHIMENDES
DE POWER UP’
Other than that, this NES version is exactly the same compared to the original. It’s a neat piece of trivia for Gradius and retro gaming fans, and certainly a very expensive collection item, since apparently only 4,000 copies were made. There’s an ebay listing that’s going for a whopping $2,500 USD:
The full poster:
Here’s a full run of the game in case you want to see those delicious noodle boxes in action:
What do you think of this version of the game? Would you have bought it and devoured those noodles?
Fun piece of (un)related trivia: Oddish’s alias name is Arukimendesu in the Japanese versions of Pokémon. Japan really likes noodles.
Alekz is the admin of the Gradius Core community, he loves everything Gradius and wants everyone to know how awesome those games are… so here we are! He also has a YouTube channel where he blabbers all about videogames in general. He’s a cool guy, you should check him out 😉