Q. What is Wonder Spirits – namco presents i/o?

Coming off a successful 27-volume series of Namco Game Sound Express, Namco set out to further release a set of 18 soundtracks for their arcadereleases at the time (1997-1998). As I worked at a Namco arcade in Boston from 1997-1998, I’m very, very interested in these.

Within Pony Canyon distribution, a famous Japanese record label, lies an imprint/sub-label named Wonder Spirits, the majority of which were these late 90’s Namco arcade game soundtracks (an even small imprint/sub-label, namco presents i/o).

This collection will include just the Namco arcade game soundtracks on this record label. There is an exceedingly strange assortment of other games with soundtrack releases on the rest of the label, which will not be included here as this sub-label clearly dominates the output.

Q. What makes these discs special?
Out of the 18 releases, 5 of them have a special data track, containing interviews, videos, and information about the game. Most of the assets can be accessed from any computer, but the full experience requires a Windows 95 computer with Macromedia Flash and Quicktime 2.1 These so called “Enhanced Discs” are denoted with “EX” in the title, and a “Made with Macromedia” logo on the Obi. Not only are the games fairly rare in some cases, some of them are so small time that it’s amazing a physically-pressed CD collection of soundtracks for them exists.

Q. What are you doing for preservation?
Aside from ripping FLAC, Log 100%, including the best scans I can make at the time, I’m also submitting the discs’ information to Redump.org, which catalogs and preserves physical media.

By dumping these discs, like I have done for Namco Game Sound Express, there is now a group of people who have a bin/cue copy of the album, which is a byte-for-byte dump of the disc. There’s no loss, no compression, just the full disc recordings. If the entire torrent-sphere blew up, with all the copies of the FLAC rips, one could get the disc image from Redump.org, and make your own (Logless) rips, lossy or lossless. The disc is truly preserved.

My goal is to preserve all 18 discs.

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No.	Catalog No.	Name	Best Available	My Release
1	WSCAX-10001	TEKKEN 3 arcade soundtrack 001 ex	FLAC (Log 100%)	Here
2	WSCAX-10002	TIME CRISIS Arcade Soundtrack 002 EX	FLAC (Log 100%)	Here
3	WSCA-00001	XEVIOUS 3D/G+ PlayStation soundtrack 001	FLAC (Log 100%)	Here
4	WSCAX-10003	ARMADILLO RACING Arcade Soundtrack 003 EX	FLAC (Log 100%)	Here
5	WSCA-00002	ALPINE RACER 2 Arcade Soundtrack 004	FLAC (Log 100%)	Here
6	WSCA-00003	ACE DRIVER Series Arcade Soundtrack 005	FLAC (Log 100%)	Here
7	WSCAX-10004	PROP CYCLE Arcade Soundtrack 006 EX	FLAC (Log 100%)	Here
8	WSCA-00004	FINAL FURLONG Arcade Soundtrack 007	FLAC (Log 100%)	Here
9	WSCAX-10005	TOKYO WARS Arcade Soundtrack 008 EX	FLAC (Log 100%)	Here
10	WSCA-00005	AQUA JET Arcade Soundtrack 009	FLAC (Log 100%)	Here
11	WSCA-00009	NAMCO CLASSIC COLLECTION VOL.1 arcade soundtrack 010	FLAC (Log 100%)	Here
12	WSCA-00010	ALPINE SURFER Arcade Soundtrack 011	FLAC (Log 100%)	Here
13	WSCA-00012	NAMCO CLASSIC COLLECTION VOL.2 arcade soundtrack 012	FLAC (Log 100%)	Here
14	WSCA-00013	DANCING EYES Arcade Soundtrack 013	FLAC (Log 100%)	Here
15	WSCA-00015	RAPID RIVER Arcade Soundtrack 014	MP3 VBR V2
16	WSCA-00016	TEKKEN 3 PlayStation Soundtrack 002	FLAC (Log 100%)	Here
17	WSCA-00017	DIRT DASH arcade soundtrack 015	FLAC (Log 100%)	Here
18	WSCA-00021	TIME CRISIS II Arcade Soundtrack 016	FLAC (Log 100%)	Here

Only Rapid River remains, if you have an original physical copy, please get in touch!