King's Quest Composer Ken Allen Puts Vintage Game Music to Orchestra Using Kickstarter

After more than a decade since Ken Allen made the transition from game composer to game producer, today he announced his latest project, an album based on his Sierra game soundtracks put to orchestra.

"When I was composing music for Sierra games like King's Quest and Space Quest, I never imagined the soundtracks would take on lives of their own," says Mr. Allen. "But thanks to YouTube, SoundCloud, and several fan websites, my work continues to find a whole new audience."

Allen is using Kickstarter to raise funds to produce the album, Under The Half Dome. It will also be distributed via iTunes and other cloud services.

"I really think crowd-funding is ideal for a project like this. We reached our funding goal in just 48 hours. If people believe in it enough to invest in its production, there's bound to be an audience outside Kickstarter."

Ken composed music two decades ago when PC sound cards used primitive synthesizer technology. "For the album, I'll be using some of the same virtual orchestra libraries used by today's film and TV composers," says Allen.

Ken Allen's soundtracks appear in games published by Sierra Online, Interplay Productions, Tsunami Media, Accolade Games, and several others. His blog chronicling the album project can be found at www.kenspace.com.

The Kickstarter project is at http://goo.gl/KtJZy