Tomb Raider - On this day

With the advent of the 1990s, games were in vogue that did not take place on foreign worlds and distant universes. The original Prince of Persia awakened the players' zeal for adventures in which the threats were earthly, and a game called Tomb Raider, which appeared exactly 25 years ago, followed this trail.

Initially, Tomb Raider was supposed to be a game modeled on the Indiana Jones movie series, in which a male character would explore Egyptian tombs. This clashed with the fact that the game was done by the British Core Design team who had no connection to Indiana Jones. The game, therefore, went in the opposite direction and got the protagonist instead of the male character. This was exactly the key thing in her development.

Young archaeologist Lara Croft made her debut in the first Tomb Raider and became a world sensation overnight. Often the credit for this is attributed to various things and it is partly true that Tomb Raider was in part a popular game precisely because it had a daring protagonist that other games of the time did not have. But it should not be forgotten that Tomb Raider was a fascinating game in itself.

Lara’s adventure was realized in just 18 months and with a budget of £ 440,000. It had several chapters divided into four locations: Peru, Greece, Egypt, and Atlantis. There, Lara searched for the missing pendant from Atlantis, avoided ancient traps, fought with equally ancient creatures such as dinosaurs and centaurs, jumped on tombs, temples, and ruins, and solved all sorts of puzzles.

Although Tomb Raider became most famous on the first-generation PlayStation, the game first appeared for the then-SEGA Saturn console, under a temporary exclusivity agreement. In the end, that exclusivity turned out to be a positive thing for gamers on PC and PlayStation as they later got a better version of the game with fixes for a few serious bugs.

Tomb Raider was a three-dimensional third-person adventure, and such games were not very common in the mid-90s. It was for this reason that the players accepted the breath of freshness very well. This was seen in the sale of the game and Tomb Raider was the best-selling title in Europe and the US for months. In the end, the game was played by more than seven million players.

In addition to good sales, Tomb Raider was remembered for his excellent music, complicated controls, and rumors about Lara Croft's bar code. Continuation with so much interest was inevitable and it was not just about that. Tomb Raider has gone through two reboots, it has been turned into a movie - twice, and Lara is still as popular today as she was during the 90's when she appeared in magazines, music videos, and the like.

On the occasion of the tenth anniversary of its release, the original game received a kind of remake called Tomb Raider Anniversary. It was launched on PC, PS2, PS3, PSP, X360, and Wii platforms and has remained the most modern version of the first Tomb Raider to this day.

A slightly more faithful remaster of the original game is offered by the Open Lara project, with the proviso that it is not a standalone product but you must own a PC version of the game.