When I first wrote about boomer shooters last year on Steam Deck and also on Switch, aside from New Blood and Nightdive, the most common name was Andrew Hulshult who has done some amazing music over the years. He recently was involved with the DOOM + DOOM II re-release that included his IDKFA soundtrack with new music for DOOM II, and having wanted to interview him for a while now, I finally had a chance to chat with him on call for a few hours to discuss game soundtracks, composition, bands he likes, guitar strings, pickups, cold brew coffee, his first film soundtrack, games he\u2019s playing, and a lot more. This interview was done on video call and then it was transcribed and edited for brevity. Just like my interview with Dave Oshry from New Blood, this one was more casual than usual, and this is likely the longest interview on TouchArcade so strap in and grab a cold brew. <\/p>\n
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TouchArcade (TA): <\/strong>So for those unaware, tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do.<\/p>\n Andrew Hulshult (AH): <\/strong>Yeah, my name\u2019s Andrew Hulshult. I\u2019m a composer and sound designer for mainly video games, but I\u2019m starting to move over into film as well. I like to just write music by myself sometimes when it\u2019s not for a game or film. But that\u2019s primarily what I do. I work in the game and film industry doing sound design, soundtracks, and sometimes voice acting.<\/p>\n TA: <\/strong>How did you end up working on the canceled Duke Nukem project and also Rise of the Triad 2013?<\/p>\n AH: <\/strong>Duke Nukem 3D Reloaded was actually just kind of like, I think that was 2010. That\u2019s, I\u2019m reaching back here a little bit. So I think Frederik at the time, Frederik Schreiber, the guy who runs 3D Realms now, or I think he still does, basically he was remaking maps in the middle of Unreal Engine 3 of like some of the original Duke 3D maps and posting them on Gearbox forums, which I think one of them that got a lot of hits was like all of the 3D renders of like Hollywood Holocaust, which is like E1M1 for Duke 3D. That caught my attention as well. I was like, wow, that looks really neat. You know, like I reached out on the forums, I was like, hey, do you need any music? Maybe this would be fun. Like, I really liked Duke 3D back in the day. And he said, yeah, sure. You know, like if you want to remake some of the stuff and hand it off to me.<\/p>\n So I just did some of that. I just had gear laying around and I wanted to kind of learn how to do this anyway. So I just dove in head first and started kind of remaking some of the old Duke 3D tracks. That kind of spawned into, you know, not a lot, not a lot was done in Duke 3D Reloaded. It was just like, you know, like some odds and ends stuff. Somehow that turned into Apogee, Terry Nagy, head hunting us and saying, hey, I have an IP that I\u2019d really like you to work on called Rise of the Triad if you guys want to give it a try. And he had an investor with him at the time who was interested named Dave Oshry And this was a very long time ago. And it\u2019s crazy. Like all those people now are like, you know, on the, we were all on the forefront of like the retro FPS revival stuff.<\/p>\n But basically after Duke 3D Reloaded, yeah, Apogee came, said, hey, we\u2019re interested. And Fred said yes on our side. And we started making Rise of the Triad 2013.<\/p>\n