The original 1993 DOOM soundtrack is officially being added to the US National Recording Registry.
The news, reported by GI.biz, arrives a week after the franchise’s 2016 reboot celebrated its 10th anniversary.
DOOM’s soundtrack, composed by Bobby Prince, joins 25 other recordings spanning 70 years, including works by Beyoncé, Ray Charles, Weezer, and more. The video game album was selected from more than 3,000 public nominations.
The addition is notable in that the Registry’s first video game inclusion only just arrived in 2023; the Super Mario Bros. theme was the first to be inducted. DOOM is only the third video game soundtrack to receive this distinction.
“Key to Doom‘s popularity was the adrenaline-fueled soundtrack created by Prince,” the National Recording Registry said.
“Prince, a lifelong musician and practising lawyer, was fascinated by the MIDI technology that rose to prominence in the mid-1980s as a means for instrument control and composition, an interest that led to his earliest work composing video games.”
It continued: “Taking advantage of his knowledge of MIDI, Prince 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.”
As our own Aaron Boehm writes of this franchise and its pioneering first-person shooter, “the 1993 classic from id Software has always been synonymous with the very concept of video games.”
About the original classic: “In the future, an unnamed marine fights for survival on a space station on Mars where the Union Aerospace Corporation accidentally opened up a physical portal to Hell.”
The post Original ‘DOOM’ Soundtrack Gets Inducted Into the National Recording Registry appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.