Bobby Prince, Influential ‘Doom’ Video Game Composer, Dead at 81

Bobby Prince, the renowned video game composer who scored titles like Doom and Wolfenstein 3D, has died at the age of 81.

Prince’s family confirmed the composer’s death, adding that he “passed peacefully into Heaven’s Musical Gates on June 16, 2026.” No cause of death was provided.

“His innovative work helped define an era of gaming and influenced generations of players around the world,” Prince’s family wrote in a Legacy.com obituary. “Through his compositions and sound design for landmark titles including Doom, Doom II, Wolfenstein 3D, Rise of the Triad, and Duke Nukem 3D, Bobby helped establish video game music as a respected art form. In 2005, the Video Game Industry honored him with a Lifetime Achievement Award.”

id Software, the company behind the Doom and Wolfenstein series, wrote on social media “Rest in peace to the video game music pioneer Bobby Prince. Your music lives on forever.”

Prince’s death comes just a month after the Library of Congress announced that the composer’s Doom score would be preserved in the National Recording Registry, a rare achievement for a video game soundtrack.

“The video game Doom brought a heavy metal energy to MS-DOS systems across the globe, while at the same time pioneering the ever-popular first-person shooter genre. Key to Doom’s popularity was the adrenaline-fueled soundtrack created by freelance video game music composer Bobby Prince,” the Library of Congress wrote in May.

“Prince, a lifelong musician and practicing lawyer, was fascinated by the MIDI technology that rose in prominence in the mid-1980s as a means for instrument control and composition, an interest that led to his earliest work composing video games. For Doom, Prince took inspiration from a pile of CDs loaned by the game’s chief designer, John Romero, including seminal works by Alice in Chains, Pantera and Metallica. Despite the limitations of the 1993-era sound card drivers, Prince composed the perfect riff-shredding accompaniment for the game’s demon-slaying journey to hell and back.”

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Prince, who graduated from law school and pursued a career as an attorney before embarking in the video game industry, also scored the MS-DOS version of the influential first-person shooter Wolfenstein 3D, the Doom sequel Doom II, and the cult favorites Duke Nukem II and Duke Nukem 3D. While the bulk of Prince’s work featured in Nineties games, he returned to the role of composer to score 2014’s Wrack.

The Library of Congress wrote of Prince, “Taking advantage of his knowledge of MIDI, Prince even worked to ensure that the sound effects he created could cut through the music by assigning them to different MIDI frequencies. The Doom soundtrack would go on to inspire countless remixes and lay the foundation for future generations of game composers.”

Prince’s family added, “While many throughout the world will remember Bobby for the music and soundscapes that helped define a generation of gaming, those who knew and loved him personally will remember something even greater: a man of talent, integrity, humility, faith, laughter, and love whose greatest joy was sharing his wit and wisdom with family and friends.”

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