It’s been an interesting year for video game revivals. So many classic games and franchises of the late 1980s and early ’90s have gained new attention in form of remakes, re-releases and re-imaginings.
Last year, the Turrican series received its own revival in the form of a push by series composer Chris Huelsbeck to completely rearrange and re-record pretty much the entirety of the music of the Turrican game’s soundtracks. Praised as some of Huelsbeck’s best work in video game music composition, the futuristic melodies and powerful soundwork has survived through the years in the hearts of fans and the works of fellow composers who were inspired by Huelsbeck’s work with the series. Armed with such appeal in mind, as well as a personal desire to revisit the soundtracks he’d created two decades earlier, Huelsbeck sought to make his dream of reworking the Turrican soundtracks using updated recording technology and orchestral backing by the WDR Radio Orchestra Cologne (who had performed the Turrican tribute Symphonic Shades for Huelsbeck). For such an undertaking, however, he would need fan support. Thus, a Kickstarter was created in April of 2012 to help fund the project.
And boy, did it get funded. Within it’s first week, over two-thirds of the project’s $75,000 requested budget had been secured through fan pledges. In the end, the Kickstarter had produced over 200% of it’s original goal, with a total pledged amount of $175,000. It had become one of the most successful Kickstarter drives in the crowd-funding site’s history at the time, and certainly meant Huelsbeck could achieve his dream and thensome.
And on November 26th, over a year and a half after the project’s successful funding, the Turrican Soundtrack Anthology was completed and released to its adoring fans.
