Legendary Doom Composer Bobby Prince Has Passed Away

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Original Doom Composer Bobby Prince Has Passed Away

Published Jun 19, 2026, 3:08 PM EDT

Eric Warner is a contributor at DualShockers with over seven years of journalism and multimedia production experience across print, online, radio, audio, and video publications. He has been writing professionally since 2017 and covering games since 2019, with work spanning lists, news, features, and guides.

Before joining DualShockers, Eric wrote for HN Entertainment and GameRant, worked as a News Fellow for WSHU Public Radio, and served as a Reporter for The Goshen News, where he produced written, audio, and video stories. He holds a Master’s Degree in Journalism and Multimedia Production from Sacred Heart University.

On Tuesday, June 16th, award-winning video game sound designer, composer, attorney and Vietnam War veteran Robert Caskin "Bobby" Prince III passed away at the age of 81.

Modern gamers may not immediately recognize Prince's name, but every gamer across the globe has heard his work before, as Prince composed the original iconic soundtrack for 1993's groundbreaking first-person shooter Doom.

Prince's passing comes just over a month after his original Doom soundtrack was selected to be preserved forever in the United States of America's Library of Congress National Recording Registry, the third time a video game soundtrack has ever been inducted into the Library after 1985's Super Mario Bros. and 2011's Minecraft.

However, Prince's career went far beyond the demon-slaying Doom franchise, and while he has passed on, his music and sound design will continue to inspire and live on in the thousands of fans who loved his work, with id Software co-founder and Doom designer John Romero writing on X, "Everyone at Romero Games is deeply saddened to learn of the passing of Bobby Prince. He left an incredible mark on games and on my life."

The Gaming Career of Bobby Prince

Before delving into video game development, Prince grew up in the state of Georgia, where he began his music career performing in bands throughout the community before going on to serve in the Vietnam War as a Platoon Leader from 1969 to 1970 and becoming an attorney after his military service.

Prince's gaming career began all the way back in 1991 with id Software's eighth game, the FPS Catacomb 3-D, with Prince composing the soundtrack for the MS-DOS title.

Prince went on to compose the soundtracks for numerous id Software games, including but not limited to:

Commander Keen in Goodbye, Galaxy
Commander Keen in Aliens
Wolfenstein 3D
Doom
Doom II

Aside from id Software titles, Prince composed the soundtracks for several other popular games of the 1990s, such as Duke Nukem II, Hexxagon, Pickle Wars, Zorro: A Cinematic Action Adventure, Duke Nukem 3D, and Duke Nukem 64, to name a few.

Prince grew up in the state of Georgia, where he began his music career performing in bands throughout the community before going on to serve in the Vietnam War

Prince took a break from video game soundtrack composition after scoring the 1998 wargame Axis & Allies until 2014, when he composed his final video game soundtrack for the cel-shaded, single-player FPS Wrack, which was directly inspired by Doom.

Wrack would be Prince's last work as a game composer, but his work will forever live on in the Doom franchise, with his work directly inspiring Mick Gordon's work in 2016's Doom and elements of his songs still being heard in Doom: The Dark Ages.

Without Prince's masterful, heavy metal-inspired work in Doom and other titles, video game music may have taken longer to be respected as a true work of art, and his music will forever be the go-to sound to listen to whilst quickly slicing and dicing demons on Mars and beyond.