Proving that maybe he’s not such a bad guy after all, John Romero has released MIDI tunes written for the Doom soundtrack that eventually went unused.
Posting on his Planet Rome.ro site, he said that he’d been digging through his original Doom development directory when he came upon the NeXTSTEP DoomEd source, Doom map source files, and the unreleased Doom MIDI music. Some of the tracks are early versions of songs that were eventually included in the game, and their quality varies considerably, according to Romero.
“There’s a reason these weren’t released,” he said in a post announcing the release. “They’re not very good, at least not as great as the music we actually shipped with the game. Some of the songs are just repetitive riffs.” There are 31 tracks, all written by Bobby Prince, the man responsible for creating the famous Doom soundtrack, as well as music accompanying numerous other games.
Romero, who came into high-flying fame as the designer of Doom and Quake during his tenure with id Software in the mid-’90s, has settled into a lower-profile position within the industry since his departure from Ion Storm. His promise to make you his bitch remains unsubstantiated.
A link to the music, as well as brief descriptions of a few tracks, is available here.
