Ken Allen
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| Ken Allen |
A.K.A.
About
From the time I was 15, all I ever wanted to do was to compose music.
Years later, when Sierra Online hired me, I was in heaven – a dream come true. I worked there for several years composing music for some of the most beloved games ever created.
But in October of 1991, I left Sierra Online over a salary dispute. Though normally a humble person, I was confident I would become the game industry’s top composer - with, or without Sierra. By now, the press and gamers alike were acknowledging my soundtracks as being on par with popular movie scores, I was determined to capitalize on that reputation.
And for a while, I did pretty well. As a freelance composer, I worked with many game companies, including Accolade, Disney, Futurescape, Access, Ballistix, Software Toolworks, Legend, GT Interactive, Interplay, PMC (a semiconductor company that manufactured sound cards), and even Dynamix for the soundtrack of SPACE QUEST 5.
I quickly became acquainted with the harsh realities of freelance work. When I landed my first composing gig, the payoff was huge, both financially and emotionally. And that feeling never got old with each successive contract. On the flip side, I spent a significant amount of time NOT composing, but rather, making connections, getting referrals, attending trade events, shaking lots of hands, and meeting at overpriced coffee shops, all for the purpose of landing my next gig.
I was also on the phone a lot, haranguing existing clients to pay up for completed work. I suppose when people become successful, they hire a business manager to do this. But this was early in my career and I was on my own.
In addition, this venture required considerable cash reserves. For every project I landed, there were five prospective clients who rejected me. And for every one month, I spent composing music, there were two spent in finding my next gig. Some say even these odds were pretty good, but I was new to the feeling of rejection.
I began to miss Sierra a little, along with the luxury of composing music in exchange for a regular paycheck. But there was no going back. I was now on the hook for it all: my overhead, equipment, supplies, and software, not to mention working alone a lot. Freelance composing came at a high price.
Among the companies I targeted, but never contracted with, was Electronic Arts. I had several advocates within EA, including some former Sierra colleagues who introduced me to the right people. However, the head of game production at EA, I believe his name was Rich Hilleman, had a few unconventional ideas. One of these was the requirement that everyone on the development team be able to write code, even the composer. I knew how to write in BASIC, but that didn’t seem to matter.
Now, if you think about it, music IS a form of code with its symbolic language, strict rules of syntax, formal structure, and conditional branching. Right? Oh well…
Another was Westwood Studios, a hit factory even in 1992 with DUNE II (the first RTS game), a few D&D titles, and the first installment of the KYRANDIA adventure game trilogy. I mailed my audition packet to Brett Sperry and Louis Castle, its founders, hoping to land a gig with the Vegas-based studio.
Flashback to a year prior, Brett and Louis were meeting with Ken Williams at Sierra’s HQ in Oakhurst, California. They were looking for a publisher for the first chapter of KYRANDIA. Ken was so impressed, he offered to buy the company. But, this turned into a bidding war with rival Virgin Interactive and Ken opted out.
When Brett and Louis pitched KYRANDIA, I was still working at Sierra. Often I would pay a visit to the QA department to get some clarity on a bug, and this usually meant I took a shortcut through the board room since it was rarely used. On THAT day, however, I walked in on Brett and Louis demoing for Ken. I’d just interrupted an important game pitch, and I could feel embarrassment washing over me, along with the penetrating sensation of three pairs of eyes boring into my skull.
I apologized for the interruption and exited.
Years later, Louis Castle confirmed my recollection of the KYRANDIA pitch and told me about the ensuing bidding war. He also says he remembers how I barged into the board room. It appears I made a lasting impression for sure.
Fast forward to 1992. After weeks of radio silence from the Westwood folks, I decided on the only sensible course of action. Stalking!
Time for Vegas, baby!
A mere six hours drive from Oakhurst, I drove to “Sin City” to meet with Westwood, albeit unannounced, and under the pretense I was on vacation. During the drive, I played out the conversation in my head.
HEY BRETT AND LOUIS, I’M ON VACATION AND CONVENIENTLY IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD. LET’S MEET TO DISCUSS WORKING TOGETHER.
The conversation in my head continued. Since you, Brett and Louis, modeled KYRANDIA as the same kind of adventure game as KING’S QUEST, and since I composed the soundtrack for KING’S QUEST. How could they turn me down as the composer for the next installment of Kyrandia?
When I arrived in Vegas I went straight to Westwood’s offices, which at the time were located at the intersection of Arville and Hacienda. I handed my audition packet to the receptionist. It contained my demo tape, résumé, product list and head shot. She invited me to take a seat and wait. After a few minutes, I stood and pretended to study the framed DUNE II poster hanging on the wall. I sat and picked up a games magazine pretending to read its ads. I pretended to be interested in the trailers for Westwood's games, playing silently in a loop on the TV screen. This went on for an eternity of 40 minutes.
The receptionist returned and handed me a note that read:
WE CAN SEE YOU ARE VERY TALENTED, KEN, BUT OUR MUSIC NEEDS ARE ALREADY BEING MET. THANK YOU FOR CONSIDERING US, AND GOOD LUCK.
What the...?!
Surely they were familiar with my Sierra soundtracks? It was right there on my resume. Did they not know the press and gamers alike acknowledged my soundtracks as being on a par with popular movie scores?
Damn! The conversation in my head went SO much better!
There was no meeting with Westwood that day. I left Vegas crestfallen.
SIDEBAR #I: I later learned that Westwood hired Frank Klepacki, who is now my good friend, as their composer. They hired him right out of high school. So by the time I showed up in 1992, Frank had proven himself to be more than up to the task of scoring music for all of Westwood’s games.
SIDEBAR #II: Out of pure coincidence, I was employed by Westwood as a game producer during the period of the EA purchase. During that time, I formed very fond relationships with many Westwood alumni, especially Brett and Louis.
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Sierra Online became a sort of “training ground” for former employees to launch their own game companies. The most promising of these was Tsunami Media.
Tsunami was founded in 1991 by former Sierra CFO, Edmond Heinbockel, with the backing of a handful of investors and a few ex-Sierra employees.
As Sierra's CFO, Ed helped put together the IPO that took the company public and turned Ken and Roberta Williams, along with a few founding employees and company officers, into millionaires (at least on paper). Years later, the hostile takeover by Cendant would eventually decimate that pay off.
When I met Ed, we were both still at Sierra, and he impressed me as someone who had his priorities in order. For one thing, he drove a Volvo sporting the vanity license plate that read SIER, the ticker symbol for Sierra’s stock.
Since I mentioned the Volvo…
In Oakhurst, there lived an amazing Volvo repair specialist. He would travel throughout the region buying Volvos at super bargain prices, each of which he would repair and detail, and then put up for sale on the OAKHURST IMPORT AUTO SALES lot. His prices were way below Kelly Blue Book. And his customers hailed his craftsmanship as unrivaled. Ed never said he bought his Volvo from the local shop, I just assumed so. Nevertheless, if you drove a Volvo in Oakhurst, you were seen as money savvy.
And that’s how I always regarded Ed.
So, with Tsunami now open for business on my doorstep. Accepting an offer from them as their composer and future game designer seemed my best option.
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Though TSUNAMI is a Japanese word for a powerful and often destructive seismic sea wave, the Tsunami Racer was an airplane designed to break the 3 km world speed record for propeller driven aircraft by a private pilot. Its designer, John R. Sandberg, died while ferrying the aircraft home after an attempt to break the record in September of 1991. Heinbockel, a private pilot, and air racing enthusiast derived the company's name from the racing aircraft, both as a tribute to Sandberg, and to identify his game development company with the speed, nimbleness and the innovative design of the aircraft.
Those of us who helped launch the company remember how tirelessly we devoted ourselves to building the Tsunami magic factory. We literally started the company in the founder’s garage. In the beginning, we were contractors. Then, my best friend, Eric Hart, was Tsunami’s first employee. And soon after, I joined the roster. Though the income was nowhere near my going rate as a contractor, I got a steady paycheck, the joy of working with people we already knew and respected, medical benefits, and even some equity ownership.
If Tsunami succeeded like Sierra, (and why shouldn’t it?) and if Ed could conjure up his IPO magic a second time (inevitable in my mind), us founding employees would have a nice nest egg.
I was all in!
While the development team continued to meet in Ed’s garage, I worked from home. Ed's garage was just too small to accommodate my music rig. I converted a garden shed into a studio and insulated it for sound AND temperature. I also wired the shed with enough power to run all of my gear.
Here is a list of equipment I had at the time.
• KORG DW-8000 (my favorite keyboard of all time) • YAMAHA TX-7 (a module version of the classic FM synth keyboard, the DX7) • KORG P3 (the most authentic-sounding piano module I could afford) • ROLAND SOUND CANVAS PRO (the top of the line) • MIRACLE PIANO (because I'd done some charts for the product) • OBERHEIM MATRIX 1000 (the richest sounding analog synth on the market) • ROLAND W30 (that also included the entire Roland Sample Library on CD-ROM, very uncommon technology at the time) • E-MU SP12 TURBO (sampling percussion with Commodore 64 floppy drive) • MACKIE MIXER with ALESIS MICROVERB and ALESIS MICRO ENHANCER EXCITER • SONY TCD-D7 (portable DAT recorder) • SOUND QUEST (synth editing software) • MAGIX SPECTRALAYERS PRO PC CARD and SOUND EDIT (audio editing software later replaced with the first edition of SOUND FORGE and a high-end Sound Blaster card) • A pair of ROLAND MA-12C (powered speakers which I still have) • PC 486sx with a Roland MIDI interface running MS WINDOWS 3.1 • CAKEWALK FOR WINDOWS (we used the DOS-based VOYETRA SEQUENCER PLUS GOLD at Sierra)
This gear occupied a bit of real estate, so working off-site made the most sense.
As we didn’t have an FTP server yet, I came to the office once per week to integrate my latest work into our games. I also met with the dev team to discuss sound needs.
For our first deal, Ed negotiated an amazing agreement with Electronic Arts to publish six of our adventure games. But just as we were wrapping up our first game, RINGWORLD, REVENGE OF THE PATRIARCH, E.A. decided not to pursue adventure games for their future catalogs, and they killed the deal.
Ed worked out an exit where we retained ownership of the games and shopped for another publisher. Accolade Games, located in San Jose, was receptive and became our new distributor. Development continued uninterrupted.
Later, as we began work on Jim Wall’s BLUE FORCE adventure game, Tsunami had enough of cash flow for us to move into our first office space.
It’s as if timing were governed by the deity of ironic coincidence (and I believe that deity’s name to be “Earl”). The offices formerly occupied by Sierra Online were vacant! We’re talking about the now-infamous "red building" that was revealed as Sierra's HQ in the finale of SPACE QUEST ]I[, THE PIRATES OF PESTULON.
How cool is THAT!
Tsunami leased the east end of the top floor and I moved my gear into the front corner office. No windows, but it had a ton of electrical outlets and its own thermostat. My guess is this was Sierra’s server room and IT office.
Ed took Ken Williams’s old corner office at the rear of the building. This one had windows and looked out over the picturesque hills lining the southern border of Oakhurst; its door was also adjacent to the fire exit.
Phil Musson, our terrific CFO, and the legendary Bob Heitman, the best development manager in the world, occupied the other offices. The rest of the space was common to about 25 desks. I still remember the weekend where I and several colleagues assembled the 25 desk kits. MAN, it was glorious!
At first, we developed point-and-click adventure games, which leveraged our expertise. But we soon developed games in other categories, genres Sierra was just beginning to explore. These include strategy games, simulations, RPGs, mini-games and interactive movies.
My favorite was PROTOSTAR, which started out as a sequel to either Accolade’s STAR CONTROL, or STARFLIGHT from Electronic Arts; I forget which. Along the way, the agreement to make that sequel fell through, and we published PROTOSTAR as it exists today.
Tsunami was also gaining recognition. THE TODAY SHOW had a segment of “must haves” for Christmas, and they showcased Tsunami’s “Get in The Game” feature for BLUE FORCE. To this day, I still marvel at how Ed's marketing team got us on the frigging TODAY SHOW.
“Get in The Game” worked like this. We sent players a kit that included a blue plastic background one square meter in size, along with instructions on how to video record themselves. The instructions also had lines for the player to say while on camera. Next, the player would send us their videotape, which we digitized and made a cleanup pass on the player’s “speaking” animation. Finally, we sent a floppy disk back to the player with instructions that described how to get into the game.
Players loved it. And the press seemed appreciative having something innovative to write about.
Christmas came and went, and Accolade began having financial problems. Their lackluster post-Christmas revenue meant funding for Tsunami was about to sunset. Ed negotiated another deal. This time with Time Warner Interactive Group (or TWIG), who distributed RETURN TO RINGWORLD, my first as a game designer.
TWIG did a decent job promoting my game. They put me on a press tour that included signing events for me and the author of the RINGWORLD novels, Larry Niven, an appearance on cable's SCI-FI TRADER, a guest interview on the radio show HOUR 25 hosted by Warren James, and a profile cover story in the Local News section of the Fresno Bee. Not bad, eh…
Meanwhile, I was involved in some business development.
I made contact with the licensing team for Gracie Films trying to set up a meeting for Tsunami to pitch THE SIMPSONS adventure games, the first of which would be my game design called HOMER'S DAY OUT. The rep liked my idea, but in 1993, he said he was too busy lobbying to get a Simpsons movie made.
I also pitched Lego on a fighting game along the lines of STREET FIGHTER, but with fighting dinosaurs made of Lego blocks. I hoped to piggyback on the foregone success of the upcoming JURASSIC PARK movie, destined to be a summer blockbuster. In this game, players would fight with their Legosaurs, knock Lego blocks from an opponent and either collect the blocks as currency or apply them directly to their characters for added upgrades and fortification.
It was clear that the Lego licensing rep drank deep from the punch bowl of political correctness. He said, “Lego will never associate ourselves with themes of violence.” Yet, in 1999, just 6 years later, LEGO – ROCK RAIDERS debuted as a war-themed real-time strategy game.
I guess I was a few years ahead of my time.
At CES in Las Vegas, I met a rep from PepsiCo, who led an initiative to produce a line of Pepsi-branded PC games. This period was the “Wild West” of PC gaming, and corporations like PepsiCo would entertain everything and anything to associate themselves with what “the kids were into.” To the surprise of none, the line of PEPSI PRESENTS games never materialized, but if it had, I’d have put Tsunami on their radar.
In the early ‘90s, IBM was into computer games, as well, or at least trying to be. At that same CES, I introduced myself as an employee of Tsunami, “that studio you've heard about launched by former Sierra Online employees.” We chatted a little, and they were impressed, but it was immediately apparent IBM had its head up its nether-regions. IBM’s brief flirtation with computer games ended not long after.
IBM and Pepsi didn’t understand gamers, but threw bags of cash at the market anyway.
Anyone remember the music adventure game called QUEST FOR FAME? It was terrible! And expensive. Had IBM hired a proper game development studio, like Tsunami Media, QUEST FOR FAME would have been what GUITAR HERO became a decade later.
In spite of my lack of progress on the biz-dev front, Tsunami Media was succeeding. Publishers wanted to work with us. The press was becoming fond of us. And players began to see Tsunami as the new adventure game in town.
We also had our share of setbacks.
Our CFO left at an inopportune time, which caused other employees to panic and flee Tsunami thinking his exit was a sign of instability.
Our artists’ workstations went down under the Michelangelo virus.
We also went dark for several days during Schumacher Levy's collision with Jupiter. We unplugged all of our equipment as a precaution to mitigate the risk of what some scientists predicted would be an EMP disturbance that would disrupt North America's electrical grid. Don't laugh, several other companies did too.
In the aftermath of a break-in at Tsunami's offices, one summer, some computer equipment, and Ed's expensive racing bike went missing. My music gear was behind a locked door, so my personal equipment was spared.
But these were minor compared to other troubles coming Tsunami’s way.
Sierra’s founder, Ken Williams, did not take kindly to a former company officer and ex-employees opening a well-backed award-winning game studio on his doorstep. He unleashed his legal team to disrupt Tsunami’s operations.
In one instance, Sierra asserted the source code for Tsunami’s adventure game engine (TsAGE) was either stolen or highly derived from Sierra’s SCI engine. Code auditors found otherwise.
Sierra also brought a claim of tortious interference, as I recall, likely because a majority of Tsunami’s employees were formerly of Sierra. To better shield the company, Ed began hiring team members who had not been from Sierra. He also expanded the company to include a second dev team dubbed Tsunami West.
Finally, management turned the company away from developing graphic adventure games and blazed a trail toward what many saw as the future of story-driven adventures. The blockbuster, MYST, proved that a game made up of pre-rendered full motion video had an audience.
To that end, Tsunami pioneered INTELLIGENT MOTION PICTURES, or IMP, an updated version of choose-your-own-adventure. IMP used a mechanism for score-keeping reminiscent of MIT’s blackjack card-counting scheme. During an encounter, if the player selected an action that was too antagonistic, the score increased by one. Too feeble, and the score decreased by one. If the player had an IMP score close enough to zero by the end of the sequence, the player would achieve the best outcome.
One of Tsunami’s games based on IMP was SILENT STEEL (the demo for which was released on September 15, 1996), which has the distinction of being the first interactive DVD-ROM application in the history.
We also encountered an instance of trademark infringement on the Tsunami name.
Though likely unintentional, Joe Ybarra (producer for many beloved titles such as M.U.L.E., ARCTIC FOX, and STARFLIGHT, and now a friend), formed a development studio called TSUNAMI PRODUCTIONS. I spotted the interloping TSUNAMI brand in an ad for SPELLCRAFT: ASPECTS OF VALOR in the pages of COMPUTER GAMING WORLD.
I promptly notified Heinbockel et al of the trademark violation.
I also heard that Joe’s “Tsunami” was developing a game called ALIEN LEGACY for Sierra Online. Sierra working with another company calling itself “Tsunami” struck no one as a coincidence.
The REAL Tsunami served Joe’s “Tsunami” with a cease and desist order, and Joe changed his company’s name to YBARRA PRODUCTIONS.
In spite of these troubles, I, and the rest of the Tsunami creative team remained devoted to making this company successful. We believed we would survive the conflict with Sierra, and greatness would follow.
And then there was MAN ENOUGH.
A local TV newsreader, Sam (not his real name) convinced Ed to use the early version of IMP to produce a dating simulation called MAN ENOUGH.
I was skeptical, but willing to give this game a chance.
On paper, it sounded like a fairly decent idea. As the player, you hired a dating service to help you find romance across several dating encounters. In spite of your clumsy efforts at courtship, if you were successful at wooing the fairer gender, by the end of the encounter, you would win her affection.
Tsunami hired Miss California to pose for the cover of the game box and to do some publicity for MAN ENOUGH. She also played the role of the game’s dating service manager and your final romantic encounter.
The thinking was since there already is LEISURE SUIT LARRY, why not MAN ENOUGH? So, I remained supportive and played along.
To that end, I suggested we might get some free publicity by having Tsunami secretly form a fake protest organization to complain to the press about the game’s treatment of women. I suggested names like EEWS – the ELECTRONIC ENTERTAINMENT WOMEN’S SOCIETY, and WOOFIEE – WOMEN OPPOSED TO THE OBJECTIFICATION OF FEMALES IN ELECTRONIC ENTERTAINMENT.
Any publicity was good publicity, right? But “Sam” (still not his real name) poo-pooed the idea. I got a strong feeling from “Sam” that he hated ideas that were not his own. The fake protest group never materialized.
As development continued, I became alarmed by what the game was becoming. The script had lines like, “I am at your ’cervix’.” and “Would you like to take delivery in the rear?” Yes, it was THAT bad.
“Sam” also used our clever IMP technology in the most boring way possible, as one massive conversation tree. On top of that, each “romantic” encounter concluded with a cock-block; you could never “do the deed” even though you made a successful run up the conversation tree with an optimal score.
Where LEISURE SUIT LARRY was a farce in which players could take delight when Larry’s conquests were foiled, MAN ENOUGH was first-person which puts the player as the game’s character, and by extension, the butt of game’s “jokes.” And this violates the first rule of game design, which is, “Do not insult the player.”
It was horrid. Critics agreed. Not surprisingly, the game sold poorly and game reviews were unanimous in loathing MAN ENOUGH.
So, by this time, I was looking to exit Tsunami, stock options notwithstanding.
I heard later that “Sam” didn’t believe the bad press or the terrible sales figures. In his mind, the game was certain to be a hit! Rumor has it that he sued Heinbockel and Tsunami’s board of directors. Apparently, “Sam” felt the books had been cooked, which is a not just a civil offense, but a criminal one.
“Sam” also contacted me, and other former Tsunami employees, to rally us to his cause. But after I gave him a gentle response of "fuck off,” I never heard from that soda jerker again.
Ed continued to make a heroic go of it. Teaming up with best-selling author and former Navy Seal, Chuck Pfarrer, Ed produced two more titles using IMP, which were SILENT STEEL and FLASH TRAFFIC. These two titles were distributed by Broderbund and reached a worldwide distribution of several million units.
Ed finally realized the success he had aimed for and so rightly deserved. And though I did a few tunes for FLASH TRAFFIC, by this time, I had moved on to work for Interplay Productions.
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Among the last games Tsunami developed was a factory simulation called FREE ENTERPRI$E – a game made distinctive by its use of a unique form of artificial intelligence.
I never did learn how David Ostby came to know Ed Heinbockle, but David had invented this breakthrough system of AI which assessed an individual’s style of task-processing to create a personality template that could be used to predict that person’s behavior under varying conditions.
I played a game David created with this AI. It was one-part ZOO TYCOON and one-part BRIGGS MYERS PERSONALITY ASSESSMENT. The game gave me a set of tasks and would time my activity as well as track the order in which I completed the goals. The personality profile derived from this process could theoretically determine (among other things) what kind of job I was best suited for.
Looking back, I believe David’s UX design (or “user experience”) contained a flaw. UX is a fancy term for describing the design of an interface that, when done well, makes the user’s tasks and goals intuitively obvious. Tasks in David’s game were presented on screen in such a way that one tended to solve the tasks in a predictable way. I believe David's test itself skewed the results.
Though the UX was flawed, the underlying personality modeling was sound. The savvy Heinbockel recognized the commercial value of this AI tech, which was way beyond IMP! Tsunami dubbed the new software FLEXIBLE INTELLIGENCE SIMULATION TECHNOLOGY (or FIST) and first used it in FREE ENTERPRI$E to model the behavior of the game’s characters.
Though the game garnered lukewarm critiques, FIST proved to have potential far beyond powering game characters.
I surmise Ed showed the technology to an acquaintance at the FBI because the FBI, along with the DoD and much of the intelligence community, became very enthusiastic about FIST. SO enthusiastic, Ed and David, along with a few remaining Tsunami team members, formed VISUAL PURPLE, a company which carried on the capabilities of this AI technology to assist in law enforcement, in counterterrorism, and other related endeavors.
A Canadian firm bought Tsunami and its IMP technology and its demise soon followed. Needless to say, Tsunami’s investors never achieved their intended exit strategy. Tsunami Media ceased operations in 1999.
Today, Tsunami Media is but a memory. The fossil remains of this once brilliantly innovative company are rumored to have resided in a mostly-empty storage unit somewhere in Vancouver, B.C. containing a few half-filled cartons of Tsunami game discs.
VISUAL PURPLE continues today, and FIST is presumably more powerful than ever, though less available in games and other consumer products.
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I really loved Tsunami and gave the company some of my best work, nearly all of which is included with this album, TSUNAMI - THE DEFINITIVE DIGITAL SOUNDTRACK COLLECTION.
Here’s a little background on how this collection came to be.
I convinced Ed and Bob to give players added value for buying our games by including CD-audio tracks on the game CD. In the industry, this is known as “mixed mode” which is comprised of several tracks of CD-audio (or “red book” audio) with the final track being the game data. You could put the game disc in your CD player and enjoy its audio content. Then, you could put the CD into your CD-ROM drive and play our game. Best of all, it cost Tsunami nothing extra to manufacture mixed mode discs!
I kept my DAT tapes with the original recordings of this music and gave the tracks to my dear friend, Aubrey Hodges, fellow alumni of the Sierra Online music department. He agreed to master this album.
(BTW, I still have the DAT tapes from the voice acting sessions for MAN ENOUGH. Any takers?)
Listening to the music today, I wince a little at some of the tracks, specifically those where I attempted to improvise sax and guitar solos for Jim Walls's BLUE FORCE. I’m not a sax player, nor do I play guitar. These tracks are proof.
In addition, I had to rush production on the BLUE FORCE recordings as we were under pressure to submit the game’s gold master disc to manufacturing in time for the Christmas buying season.
The rest of my work in this collection is pretty good, having taken inspiration from the likes of Tony MacAlpine, Bruce Hornsby, Tangerine Dream, Billy Preston and several other of my musical heroes, like Jerry Goldsmith.
What is NOT included on this album are soundtracks created by other Tsunami composers. For example, the music for GEEKWAD'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY was created by my friend, Eric Hart, and FLASH TRAFFIC was scored by Charles Marshall, who was, I presume, an acquaintance of the game’s writer.
In addition, I have not included the soundtracks for those games where no CD audio was created, (for example, the game CD for RETURN TO RINGWORLD only had the game program on the disc - no red book audio). To my chagrin, the title song for BLUE FORCE never made it to CD audio either; an oversight I hope to remedy someday.
This album is simply a remastering of previously released CD audio.
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I devote this album to you, my dear listeners and friends. I hope this brings you enjoyment and a little nostalgia.
I dedicate this effort to my mother and HER father (my Pampa Al), both of whom encouraged our family’s love of performing music, and who passed on this tradition from one generation to the next… and to the next, like an heirloom destined for the Antiques Roadshow.
I also devote the finished work of this album to Linda, Glenn, Bill, Milton, Otis and Gerald, my music teachers and mentors. Each of these instructors saw in my eyes the raw love affair I was having with composing music. Each of my music teachers made my education in the musical arts their mission in the brief time we had together.
Also, a very special thanks to Aubrey Hodges.
Finally, THANK YOU to those who have curated my music online for posterity. And by the way, posterity just called and is asking WTF?
Affection and Respect to You All.
Ken Allen, Your Music Pal
I remember when I heard George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue for the first time. My mother got the vinyl album performed by the Warner Brothers Orchestra as part of her membership in the Columbia House Record Club.
The album sat humbly on the lower rack of the record stand that she got for signing up to be a member. Then one day, our family got a console stereo as a gift from a family member who was moving and had no space for it in the new residence.
One summer day soon thereafter, I set about exploring my mother's record collection. There was the regular stuff. Elvis, Perry Como, Johnny Mann Singers, Doris Day, but then there was this oddity, like a game of "one of these things was not like the other."
The jacket was different than any other in the stack. It was simple ivory with a black ribbon over-layed with a red one, kinda like a the book marks you'd find in the family bible, or perhaps like one of those envelopes they use to announce the Oscar winner.
Holding the record felt special, no strike that. It felt magical, and somehow I was the magician's assistant. I placed the record on the turntable and positioned the needle on the edge of that spinning disc, and waited.
From the opening notes of clarinet solo I was hooked. The world fell away and it was just me and George Gershwin. Then piano came in like an older brother who'd arrived to show his little sister, the clarinet, how it was done.
Next, the brass barged in, like the home team taking the ball field, but the pianist kept the spotlight sparing with the wind section as if in a test of will.
And just as the winds were about to surrender, the backup arrived and the strings swooped in like paratroopers to lend support to the reeds and brass.
This contest between the piano and orchestra went on, sometimes it was a fist fight between bitter siblings, and at other times it was like two lovers embraced in a passionate tango. I had never heard anything like this in my young life, and to this day nothing measures up to this blue rhapsody.
But George Gershwin and his co-conspirators in the Warner Brothers Orchestra were not done with me just yet. The drama continued to build until the magnificent finale of a piano being demolished like a watermelon at the hands of Gallagher, while being bathed in the warm embrace an orchestral crescendo, the drama that assaulted my ears had every nano-volt of my attention.
When it was over, I realized I hadn't breathed for what seemed like several minutes.
THIS one piece has perhaps had more influence over me than any other. And I'm sure I've listened to it hundreds of times.
THIS one piece taught me music was a language capable of sprawling drama and the telling of epic tales.
THIS was the audio garden that captured my heart and imagination, and has since born many seasons of fruitful bounty!
And now, here's the secret. After reading this, I invite you to go back and listen to the theme for Oilswell.
THIS is why that theme sounds so familiar.
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Games by Ken Allen
Title Year Credits Return to Ringworld 1994 Designer, Director
