Tomb Raider
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Tomb Raider
Developed by Core Design Published by Eidos Interactive Lead Graphic Artist: Toby Gard Lead Programmer: Paul Douglas Music by Martin Iveson and Nathan McCree Engine: Custom: Tomb Raider Level Editor Platforms PlayStation, Sega Saturn, MS-DOS, Macintosh, Windows Mobile & N-Gage Release date(s): United States - 15 November 1996 United Kingdom - 22 November 1996 Rating: ELSPA: 15+ - ESRB: T - PEGI: 12+ (N-Gage) |
Tomb Raider is the first video game in the Tomb Raider Series. It was developed by Core Design and published by Eidos Interactive. It spawned a number of sequels, and also two films based on the video games starring Angelina Jolie.
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Main Information
Tomb Raider is a game developed by Core Design and published by Eidos Interactive. It was released in 1996, first on the Sega Saturn, then on PC and Playstation. The game follows the adventures of Lara Croft. It was a very influential and revolutionary game for its time and was critically acclaimed.
Lara Croft, daughter of Lord Henshingly Croft, was brought up in wealth and privilege. This changed when, on a return from a skiing trip, her plane crashed in the Himalayas. Lara - then aged 21- was the only survivor, and having to stay alive on her own in the wild had a huge impact on her. She found she could no longer bear the sheltered world of British aristocracy and turned to adventuring instead.
Lord and Lady Croft did not agree with their daughter's rejection of the lifestyle intended for her, so Lara was soon disowned. She turned to publishing books about her discoveries to fund her trips, and has made a name for herself by discovering several important archaeological sites, as well as stamping out Big Foot.
It is shortly after the Big Foot discovery that Lara Croft is contacted by the CEO of Natla Technologies, Miss Jacqueline Natla, and hired to recover the piece of the Atlantean Scion from an unfounded tomb in the Peruvian Andes. Ever the adventurer, Lara accepts the job - but soon discovers that she is not the only person after the artefact, and that her new employer isn't at all what she seems to be.
Plot
The story opens with a prologue in Los Alamos County, New Mexico. A nuclear test causes an earthquake which exposes an ancient device buried beneath the desert. The device is set into motion and reveals a frozen life form. The story then continues in the present day.
After Lara Croft returns from an expedition in the Himalayas she is contacted by an American named Larson, who works for the wealthy businesswoman Jacqueline Natla, owner of Natla Technologies. At Natla's request, Lara sets out on an expedition to recover a mysterious artefact called the Scion from the lost tomb of Qualopec, in the mountains of Peru. However after successfully retrieving the object, she is nearly robbed of it when Larson attempts to kill her outside the tomb. Wasting no time, Lara sets out to discover why Natla double-crossed her, and breaks into her office to find out more about the truth behind the artefact, of which there appears to be more than one piece. She discovers a medieval manuscript which reveals the whereabouts of a second piece of the Scion, which is buried beneath an ancient monastery of St. Francis in Greece. It appears Natla has sent Pierre Dupont, a rival French archaeologist, to recover the fragment from the site. Hot on each others trail, Lara and Pierre race each other through the catacombs of the monastery to get to the second Scion first. The battle comes to a head at the tomb of Tihocan, where Lara recovers the second Scion and finally kills Pierre Dupont. An inscription inside the tomb reveals that Tihocan was one of three joint rulers of Atlantis. At some point a calamity struck which sunk the continent into the ocean and scattered their culture over the world. Qualopec continued to rule in South America, Tihocan in Greece, and it appears a third ruler thrived in Egypt.
Locations
Lara's Home - The training level of the game where lara explains to you the various moves she can do.
Peru - Natla contacts Lara and tells her that the mystical artefact, the Scion, is located in Peru, which is the first location of this game consisting of four levels
Greece - When Lara finds the first piece, clues lead her to Greece where she will spend five levels searching for the second piece of the Scion
Egypt - Uniting the first two pieces, Lara finds out the location of the third piece in Egypt and spends three levels there
Atlantis - When Lara assembles all three pieces of the Scion and finds out the truth, she discovers the legendary lost island of Atlantis and explores it for three levels
Characters
Enemies
Bats - Quick and agile enemy. Easy to defeat if you are prepared, but they can knock you off ledges.
Wolves - Easy on their own, but dangerous in packs. Stay on the move when facing them.
Bears - Slow but powerful enemy. Keep your distance and they are easy to defeat.
Raptors - Quick and dangerous. Keep moving and side jump a lot if you want to defeat this enemy without losing too much health.
T-Rex - Huge dinosaur from the Lost Valley, very easy to defeat if you keep moving.
Lions - Constantly attack Lara, so keep your distance when fighting them.
Alligators - Quick enemies who are quite big, so can easily attack Lara. Keep your distance and jump around them a lot to avoid being hit.
Rats - Mere pests like the bats. Easily dispatched.
Centaurs - These beasts are really strong and fast, so beware and keep Lara moving when fighting them.
Cat Mummies - Fast and powerful, so beware of them and the fireballs that they throw.
Flying Cat Mummies - Flying versions of the cat mummies, they also throw fireballs at you.
Doppelganger - A monster that mimics Lara's every move. Including firing upon, Lara have to lure it somewhere to even have change of defeating it.
Torso Monster - Slow, but can get to Lara very easily. Keep running and jumping to avoid being flattened by this huge beast.
Natla Boss - Quick to respond to Lara's movement and is very powerful, so beware.
Weapons
Pistols - Lara Croft's standard weapons, carries unlimited ammo. The guns model's are unknown but they seem to bear a similar resemblance to the Colt 1911 series.
Shotgun - Slow but powerful, used when needed to dispatch enemies fast, for example ambushes in small rooms.
Magnums - More powerful handguns than the pistols. The ammo for it was quite scarce.
Uzis - Firing a repeated amount of bullets, these weapons were the most powerful in the game. Technically speaking it is not the izrealian model Uzi but Ingram.
Development History
Preliminary work on Tomb Raider commenced in 1993, but it was not until November 1996 that the game actually saw the light of day as a retail product. The title was crafted by Core Design of Europe, who took 18 months to develop it.The team consisted of six people, among them Toby Gard, who is credited with the creation of Lara Croft.The character went through several changes before Core settled on the version she became famous for. In its earliest conception, Lara Croft was a male place holder for an as yet undefined character, but as Core decided that puzzles and stealth should be more important to the game than action, they found that these requirements better suited a female character than a classic male action hero.
As such Lara was born under the name Laura Cruz. "Laura" was later dropped in favour of Lara, to appeal more to American audiences. At the same time, her backstory started to shape up and it was decided she should become more English, hence Cruz was changed to Croft to accommodate this.Personality-wise, Lara was a cold-blooded militaristic type in the early concepts.According to Toby Gard, the idea to make her a female Indiana Jones was not present from the beginning, but rather grew naturally out of the development process as the game took its final form.
The front of the Derby Studios building where Core Design worked on the game was later used as the front of Croft Manor.
It is Core's contention that the company was struggling somewhat with 32-bit development at that time.The first glints of the game were seen on Sega Saturn development kits. However, ultimately, it would be the PlayStation rendition that would be known best.
There was a lot of media regarding the Tomb Raider beta during early 2008, where lots of media was leaked. Among other things, a totally different opening cutscene, or even an ending cutscene, seeing that Lara did have the Scion during it. There was also some beta gameplay, where Lara sported a braid (Which supposedly made the game slow.) and glasses.
Cultural Icon
The game's use of a hard edged, female heroine has been both hailed as revolutionary (breaking away from the male perspective of game playing) and derided as sexist for its stereotypical depiction of a woman designed to appeal to teenage boys.Nevertheless, Lara caused a sensation in the gaming world and catapulted her to cyber celebrity status. Aside from game appearances, Lara was featured on covers of magazines, in comic books and films. The amount of media coverage Lara received at the time was previously unheard of, with many magazines even outside the video game industry printing articles on her.Several large corporations, such as Timberland and Lucozade wanted to use her as their spokesperson. The image of Lara Croft was used by U2 in their PopMart Tour.
Nude Raider
A development in Lara's history is the so-called Nude Raider patch. This patch was created externally from Core and Eidos and was never housed on the Eidos or Core websites. The patch, when added to an existing Tomb Raider game, caused Lara to appear naked. Contrary to rumour, there is no nude code in any console version of the game. In April 2004, it was falsely alleged that an insider from Eidos reported to a Tomb Raider electronic mailing list that Eidos had begun suing gamers using the Nude Raider patches. Eidos sent cease and desist letters to the owners of nuderaider.com who were hosting the Nude Raider patch, enforcing their intellectual property of Tomb Raider. Sites depicting nude images of Lara Croft have been sent cease and desist notices and shut down,and Eidos Interactive was awarded the rights to the domain name nuderaider.com As of January 2008, the nuderaider domain is registered to Netcorp of Glendale, California and points to a completely generic search engine page.
Versions and Expansions
Tomb Raider was released for DOS, Macintosh, Nokia N-Gage, Pocket PC, and the PlayStation and Sega Saturn game consoles. Saving methods are different - on the DOS and Macintosh versions, the player can save anywhere, while on the PlayStation and Sega Saturn versions the player is required to find Save Crystals to save. The DOS version also does not include the additional incidental music during gameplay. The PlayStation & Sega Saturn version only have one kind of ambience, while the PC has four different ambient tracks.
The Greatest Hits edition of the PlayStation version had extra demos and videos of other Eidos games. The early version contained demos for Tomb Raider II and Fighting Force. The next print contained Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver, Tomb Raider III, and Gex 3: Deep Cover Gecko with videos of Fear Effect and Fighting Force 2.
Windows 2000, Windows XP and Vista do not share Windows 9x's full direct hardware DOS support and attempting to run the game from the CD results in a DOS Box flash and then nothing.
Unfinished Business
In 1998, shortly after the release of Tomb Raider II, Tomb Raider was re-released for DOS and released for the first time for Macintosh. This release, titled Tomb Raider Gold in North America, and Tomb Raider: Unfinished Business elsewhere, featured the regular game as well as four new bonus levels in two extra chapters. The levels for Tomb Raider Gold were created in the San Francisco office of Eidos by Phil Campbell, Rebecca Shearin, and Gary LaRochelle.
The first chapter of the game takes place in Egypt, and occurs several months after the events of Tomb Raider. The story sees Lara returning to the City of Khamoon to investigate a mysterious statue of the Egyptian goddess Bast. This leads to her discovery of an entirely new temple dedicated to the cat deity, which includes a giant gold statue several stories high. The second chapter takes place before those of the first chapter - quite literally straight after the events of Tomb Raider. This chapter starts with Lara sliding down the same slope as in Tomb Raider's final level, and finishes with her destroying the last remnants of the Atlantean Race.
Remake
The first hint about a remake of the original Tomb Raider was a financial release from SCi Entertainment that revealed a game Tomb Raider 10th Anniversary Edition for PSP, which was supposed to be released in summer 2006.Another hint appeared as a rumour on May 30, 2006: "Eidos/SCi are planning on celebrating Lara's 10th birthday by releasing a remake of her original adventure".A video game trailer showing footage of a new Tomb Raider game was distributed on the Internet on June 8, 2006. The titles and logos of the trailer claimed that the title was Lara Croft Tomb Raider: Anniversary Edition, a PSP game by Core Design. The trailer featured Lara Croft in familiar yet remodelled environments from the original Tomb Raider. On June 15, 2006, Core Design released an official statement claiming that the trailer was "an internal presentation of a game that was being developed by Core Design until very recently", and had been completely cancelled by SCi. A 'reimagining' of the game was later released in the form of Tomb Raider Anniversary.
Cheat Codes
PlayStation version- Press Select to go to inventory screen, then enter the following:
| Effect | Cheat Code |
|---|---|
| All Weapons & Ammo NTSC | L1, Triangle, R2, L2, L2, R2, Circle, L1 |
| Level Skip NTSC | L2, R2, L1, Circle, Triangle, L1, R2, L2 |
| All Weapons & Ammo PAL | L1, Triangle, L2, R2, R2, L2, Circle, L1 |
| Level Skip PAL | L1, Triangle, L2, R2, R2, L2, Circle, L1 |
PC & Mac version-
While in game, follow the instructions to activate the cheats:
| Effect | Cheat Code |
|---|---|
| All Weapons & Ammo | Walk one step forward, one step back, then turn around three times any direction, then jump forward. |
| Level Skip | Walk one step forward, one step back, turn around three times in any direction, then backflip. |
Sega Saturn version-
Go to the inventory screen, then the last page of the passport.
| Effect | Cheat Code |
|---|---|
| All Weapons & Ammo | While in the passport press Z,Y,Z,Y,X,X,X then start. Then press A and Up. |
| Level Skip | In the passport press Z,Y,Z,Y,X,X,X, then start. Press C. |
Gallery
 Title Screen |
 Lara in The Lost Valley, Peru |
 Lara in Tomb of Tihocan, Greece |
 Lara in Sanctuary of the Scion, Egypt |
 Lara in The Great Pyramid, Atlantis |
 Lara In Peru |
 Lara In Greece |
 Lara In Egypt |
 Lara In Atlantis |
See Also
External links
