Bobby Prince has died

Bobby Prince, '90s FPS game musician extraordinare and longtime id Software associate, has died at 81. Now, early on, there were things like Commander Keen and Eat Your Vegetables, which were cute and amusing yet almost completely orthogonal to his later output. Correspondingly, his transitional work in Wolfenstein 3D was fine (especially The Ultimate Challenge) but clearly all of a particular genre, and his otherwise solid contributions to Duke Nukem 3D and Rise of the Triad ended up overshadowed by Lee Jackson's (exhibit A: Grabbag; exhibit B: Prince's main theme but Jackson's KISS OFF).

Doom, on the other hand ... well. It's not just that these were solid gamer tracks, it's that they sounded good on just about anybody's sound card. We had high quality MIDI on Mac while you schlubs struggled with Sound Blaster Pros and it still didn't sound like a$$. That's talent. While everybody will name At Doom's Gate (E1M1) as his best, I claim it is only merely his most memorable, and solely because everyone on the whole stinking planet has played it at least once. Instead, I proffer I Sawed The Demons (E2M1), Untitled (E3M1), and the reworked Wolf 3D holdover Evil Incarnate (Doom II MAP31) as his heaviest and meatiest, Donna To The Rescue (E3M2) as his funkiest, The Demons from Adrian's Pen (E2M2) and They're Going To Get You (E2M4) as his creepiest (I love the "car going out of control" feel to E2M2, as Prince himself called it), and Sign of Evil (E1M8) as the first track that legitimately had me scared as the doors slide open and the Bruiser Brothers emerge to kill. If that one didn't make you wet your pants back in the day, maybe this remix will. The Doom port for PlayStation didn't want to pay him royalties so they cheaped out and brought in Aubrey Hodges. Good music but hardly worthy of the Master, and to an otherwise excellent port's detriment.

I'd say rest in peace, but given the infernal subject matter that just doesn't seem adequate.