Various – Namco Museum: Arcade Greatest Hits

Really cool packaging and vinyl colour. This isn't something you would really want to "listen" to , but it's a great Battle Dj / Scratch Tool and general Video Game vinyl collector piece. It lives up to the Namco Museum name and is a little audio time capsule for this era of early gaming. It's recorded well and has a huge variety of sounds to sample and play with.

Personally I love this record, but absolutely agree with the lower ratings here if you want something to listen to. It's not really marketed as a Dj Tool, so I could see people being disappointed with this if they were expecting music only. If you're in to sampling or Dj Tools, this is a great get.

This release is kinda meh, it looks really nice and the packaging is 10/10 but i cant see myself playing this record. Side A is just someone playing various games on an emulator, pressed onto a record. I get its a novelty, but jesus christ, theres enough namco games that have background music that couldve filled this record instead of gameplay audio (and was it really necessary to have sound effects over Dig Dug? That game literally has background music). Side B is all music besides track 1 which is ok. Happy to see the Mappy BGM and Splatterhouse's ending theme here though.

i kinda love this one. the A side is front to back classic namco sound design, which is cute background ambience when you don't want silence. the B side is phenomenal, though, with an extremely leftfield mix of music. Druaga, Ishtar, Splatterhouse, Dragon Buster, Rolling Thunder? some of the actual best of 80s namco. was thrilled to see the selection and the packaging is delightful.

depending on who you are, it could be anything from a novelty record to a unique documentation of namco's earlier master - and not so master - works. lovely stuff.

An interesting record to say the least. From Spacelab comes a longly teased Namco Museum release, in pretty awesome packaging. It is top notch.

This comes in a die-cut jacket with an inner printed sleeve that you can switch between Pac-Man or Galaga; Mappy if you decide to put the booklet in front. The site mentions Dig Dug, however this is misleading as it's printed on the inside of the jacket, you'll only see it if both the sleeve and booklet are removed from the jacket. The booklet is nice visual candy for a minute or two while the sounds of 80s nostalgia blasts over your head.

For this release, I got the Pac-Man variant. Initial photos of the record that were shown on the internet are somewhat humorous as the Pac-Man design differs from copy to copy. Mine looks like Pac-Man's jaw is extended to its limit. The audio was terrifically mastered by Mr. Peterson for the vinyl format, no complaints on that front. The pressing is surprisingly good. There is little surface noise on the record, unfortunately there is noticeably more noise as the needle transitions to and from the yellow and clear portions but it is barely noticeable, you'd have to be listening for it to notice in the silent portions.

As for the audio itself, it's a mixed bag. I can understand why for the earlier games they went with the 'gameplay' recordings, with sound effects layered on top as the tracks themselves are only seconds long loops but I think they could have still done it without all the extra sounds. Also kind of odd to have the Pac-Man 'miss' sound at the end of Side II when it's already at the end of the Pac-Man track on Side I. Seems forced.

I would recommend this release to collectors or listeners of video game music in general. This is probably not something you're going to put on often, maybe once and then put it away. It could be useful for a gaming party or a 80s event or even in the background as you work on something. Otherwise it is an interesting little novelty record.