Tomb Raider

Eidos was awarded the rights to the domain name nuderaider.com. Tycho on the Earth's Moon:. However, the complete accuracy of such reports may be called into question^{[citation needed]}, as it is likely that the rumors are exaggerated to an extent. Tyco has been used as the name for two distinct companies:. It is also reported^{[citation needed]} that Eidos intend to pursue action against unauthorized "home-made" patches for the game, and indeed any other games that the publisher has ownership rights to. The similarly-named Ty, the maker of Beanie Babies, is unrelated. In April 2004, it is also alleged^{[citation needed]} that an insider from Eidos reported to a Tomb Raider electronic mailing list that Eidos had begun suing gamers using the Nude Raider patches and sent cease and desist letters to servers hosting the Nude Raider patch, enforcing their intellectual property of Tomb Raider. It is sometimes seen spelled Tyco.

This program, when added to an existing Tomb Raider game, caused Lara to appear naked. Tycho (crater) is a prominent lunar impact crater located in the southern lunar highlands. However, many people downloaded the patch and uploaded it to different websites. It was named for founder John Tyler, whose family reacquired the model train business under the Mantua Industries name from 1977 until 2001. It is alleged that someone within Eidos created the patch then released it on the Eidos website back in 1996, where it remained for a few hours until Eidos discovered it and removed the patch. Tyco Toys was originally a model train manufacturer that became a division of Sara Lee and which was acquired by Mattel in 1996. A development in Lara's history is the so-called Nude Raider patch. The company was named for Tyler Rosenberg, the son of founder Arthur Rosenberg.

The PC version was also later reissued with added bonus levels. Tyco International is a Bermuda-based conglomerate which was a prominent corporate scandal in the early 2000s. The Saturn version offers slightly faster gameplay over the PlayStation version but sacrifices some graphical quality. No notable differences between versions exist, although the graphics on the PC version are of superior quality. Tomb Raider was released for the PC and the PlayStation and Sega Saturn game consoles.

Several large corporations such as Timberland wanted to use the character for their advertising. The amount of media coverage Lara received was at the time unheard of, with many magazines even outside the video game industry printing articles on her. Aside from game appearances, Lara was featured on covers of magazines, in comic books and movies. Nevertheless, Lara caused a sensation in the gaming world and catapultated her to cyber celebrity status.

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 an audience of teenage boys. Some fans complained at the lack of action in favor of puzzle solving, although ironically, Tomb Raider II would be criticized for its overabundance of violence, especially against human opponents. Nevertheless, Tomb Raider received some criticism for minor camera and object glitches, as well as its difficult save system. Although the game spawned numerous sequels, often superior in scope and graphics, the original remains the most beloved among fans and critics.

As one of the top selling games of the system, it was one of the first to be released on PlayStation's Platinum series, and its success made Tomb Raider II one of the most anticipated games of 1997. The resulting sales were consequential, Topping the British charts a record three times, and contributing much to the success of the PlayStation. The level of sophistication Tomb Raider reached by combining state-of-the-art graphics, classical music and a cinematic approach to gameplay was at the time unprecedented. Upon its release, Tomb Raider was widely praised by gaming magazines for its revolutionary graphics, inventive gameplay and involving storyline.

However, ultimately, it would be the PlayStation rendition that would be known best. The first glints of the game were seen on Sega Saturn development kits. It is also rumoured that Tomb Raider's publishing company Eidos was near bankrupcy when Tomb Raider was created. Interestingly enough, it is Core's contention that the company was struggling somewhat with 32-bit development at that time.

As he was resizing it back to normal, the other designers saw what he was working on and told him they loved it and that she should keep the double size. Toby Gard was fudging around with the model when he accidentally blew up Lara's bosom to 150% of what he intended it to be. Lara's famous breast size was in actuality brought about by accident. 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.

Personality-wise, Lara was a cold-blooded militaristic type in the early concepts. However at the same time, her backstory started to shape up and it was decided she should become more British, hence Cruise was changed to Croft to accommodate this. "Laura" was later dropped in favor of Lara, to appeal more to American audiences. As such Lara was born under the name Laura Cruise.

In its earliest conception, Lara Croft was a male placeholder 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. The character went through several changes before Core settled on the version she became famous for. The team consisted of six people, among them Toby Gard, who is credited with the invention of Lara Croft. The title was crafted by Core Design of Europe, who took 18 months to develop it.

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 levels for Tomb Raider Gold were created in the San Francisco office of Eidos Interactive by Phil Campbell, Rebecca Shearin and Gary LaRochelle. In Unfinished Business, having learned of the existence of a hive of surviving creatures guarding an alien hatchery, Lara returns to Atlantis to destroy the aliens before they invade again. In Shadow of the Cat, Lara returns to the City of Khamoon in search of an undiscovered tomb dedicated to the Egyptian cat-goddess, Bastet.

The re-release was exclusive to the PC. The expansion featured the regular game as well as four new bonus levels in two extra scenarios called The Shadow of the Cat and Unfinished Business. In 1998 Tomb Raider was re-released as Tomb Raider Gold for PC. The Atlantis levels are among the hardest in the game.

This is where the mystery unfolds. Lara Croft has tracked down Natla and her goons to a remote island, where mining operations of Natla Technologies have partially exposed the great pyramid of Atlantis. The levels in Egypt are all of hard difficulty. The long lost third ruler of Atlantis was buried here, along with the third piece of the Scion.

In a hidden canyon near the Valley of Kings, Lara explores buried pyramids and a sphinx while fighting pumas, crocodiles, and some surprising mystical monsters. Stages in this monastery range from average to hard difficulty. Here Lara battles lions, alligators and monkeys as she explores ruins of these ancient civilizations, and races for the second piece of the Scion with a man named Pierre DuPont, who unfortunately entered before Lara did. Francis was built upon the side of a mountain that conceals layer upon layer of civilization, harkening back to the The Golden Age of Greece and Rome.

This medieval monastery of St. The levels in Peru are of an average difficulty. The player must guide Lara through the lost Incan city while battling wolves, bats, bears and more. Here she makes her way through the remains of a civilization that flourished for hundreds of years, in valleys where time literally stood still.

Natla sends Lara Croft to Peru, where she discovers the entrance to the long lost tomb of Qualopec high up in the mountains. The story mode begins with an introductional sequence. This tutorial is designed to get the player acquainted with the basics of the game and includes jumping and climbing techniques on ten vaulting boxes. From the options menu, the player may choose to complete the training course in Lara's home before getting started with the main game.

A stage is finished when a certain doorway is reached or an artifact recovered. A compromise was reached with Tomb Raider III under the form of "collectible save crystals." The PC and Mac versions of the game allow the player to save at any time. Following criticism on this system, Core implemented a save anywhere at anytime feature in Tomb Raider II, which, ironically, lead to complaints that the game was made too easy. The scarcity of these points, however, means that if the player dies, large portions of each level must be replayed, much to the players' frustration.

When Lara touches one of these the option to save is made available. In the PlayStation and Sega Saturn versions of Tomb Raider, saving the game is restricted to fixed save points within each level, marked by a floating blue crystal. The player is usually rewarded with extra med-packs, ammo and occasionally, new weapons. Some may be hidden along the roadside in bushes, others require the completion of a hidden course or optional puzzle to be found.

The locations of these secrets vary in difficulty to reach. Discovering these secrets is optional, and when the player has found one a tune plays. Throughout each stage, one or more secrets may be located. The puzzles that the player encounters across each level vary: pulling specific combinations of levers, a course of timed jumps, avoiding a certain trap or collecting several keystones.

Any item that is collected is held onto in Lara's inventory until it is used. Game-specific items are keys and artifacts required to complete a stage. Regular items to pick up include ammo, and small and large medpacks. A general action button is used to perform a wide range of movements in Tomb Raider, such as picking up items, pulling switches, firing guns, pushing or pulling blocks and grabbing onto ledges.

Other means by which the game will prematurely end include drowning, electrocution, being shot, being crushed and turning to gold. Should Lara touch it, she will immediately catch fire and die within seconds unless the player manages to dive into a nearby pond. Fire is a lethal substance in the game. Furthermore, they cannot climb on higher platforms and as such remain confined to the rooms they inhabit.

The various animals that attack Lara, while dangerous in large numbers, are easily avoided and gunned down. Also note that landing on spikes, even if they are jumped upon from ground level, are always fatal. Although Lara may survive a drop from high peaks, she will easily break her neck if she performs the dive move even from relatively low heights. As the game adopts a platform style approach of progress, well timed jumps must often bring Lara safely to the other side of a ledge or she will plummet to the ground below.

Numerous enemies as well as a variety of lethal traps can bring about Lara's death in Tomb Raider, the most immediate threat of which is falling to death. This development went on to become a staple of the series. At a certain point in the story, Lara will be stripped of all her weapons, leaving the player defenseless and forced to recover her pistols. Additional weapons include the shotgun, dual magnums and dual uzis.

By default she carries two pistols with infinite ammo. In a free environment, Lara has two basic stances: one with weapons drawn and one with her hands free. While swimming, an extra statusbar appears under the health meter to indicate the amount of breath left in Lara's lungs. Besides walking, running and jumping, Lara can perform side-steps, hang on ledges, roll over, dive and swim through water.

Movement in the game is varied and allows for complex interactions with the environment. As such, Tomb Raider in essence harkens back to the classical form of platform style gameplay. Instead the emphasis lies on solving of puzzles and performing trick jumps to complete each level. Gunplay is restricted to the killing of various animals that appear throughout each stage, although ocassionally Lara may be faced with a human opponent.

On the way, she must kill dangerous animals and other creatures, while collecting objects and solving puzzles to gain access to an ultimate prize, usually a powerful artifact. The object of Tomb Raider is to guide Lara through a series of tombs and other locations in search of treasures and artifacts. Ledges, walls and ceilings sit at 90 degrees to each other (although the game designers used some clever tricks to make this less obvious). The world she inhabits is fully drawn in three dimensions and characterized by its cubic nature.

Lara is always visible and the camera follows the action from behind or over her shoulder. The game is presented in third person perspective. In Tomb Raider, the player controls the female archeologist Lara Croft, in search for the three mysterious Scion artifacts across the world. As she delves into the reasons why Natla would double-cross her, she uncovers a mystery that reaches back before the dawn of recorded time to the treachery that destroyed the Atlantean civilization and the disasters that struck the world when it fell.

Using her cunning wits and athletic strength, Lara escapes. However after discovering the fragment, things get ugly when Lara finds herself face to face with one of Natla's hired goons. Wasting no time, Lara sets out on her quest to find one of the three pieces of the ancient Atlantean Scion, a talisman of incredible power. After Lara Croft returns from a hunting trip in the Himalayas, she is contacted by Jacqueline Natla, a conniving businesswoman who convinces Lara to recover a mysterious artifact from the tomb of Qualopec in Peru.

. It spawned numerous sequels and an entire franchise of related media. The game is widely considered to be among the best and most influential games ever made. Tomb Raider follows the exploits of Lara Croft, a British archaeologist in search of ancient treasures à la Indiana Jones.

It was originally released in 1996 for PC, PlayStation and Sega Saturn. Tomb Raider is a video game developed by Core Design and published by Eidos Interactive. 11, 2006. Retrieved Feb.

The Face. "Lara hit in The Face". Sawyer, Miranda (June 1997). By inserting the Tomb Raider disc into a regular CD player, audio and music from the game can be heard, among them an unused track of an early Eidos game called Firestorm.

Lara Croft's mansion was modelled after the front of the Derby Studios building where Core Design worked on the game. Tomb Raider pays homage to Indiana Jones in a number of ways, including references to traps from Raiders of the Lost Ark, such as the spiked pits, poison darts, boulders and the collapsing temples. In 1998, Tomb Raider won the Origins Award for Best Action Computer Game of 1997. Level 15: The Great Pyramid.

Level 14: Atlantis. Level 13: Natla's Mines. Level 12: Sanctuary of the Scion. Level 11: Obelisk of Khamoon.

Level 10: City of Khamoon. Level 9: Tomb of Tihocan. Level 8: Cistern. Level 7: Palace Midas.

Level 6: Colosseum. Francis Folly. Level 5: St. Level 4: Tomb of Qualopec.

Level 3: The Lost Valley. Level 2: City of Vilcabamba. Level 1: Caves. Tihocan: Another ruler of Atlantis, Tihocan was buried around the isles of Greece.

Qualopec: One of the ancient rulers of the lost continent of Atlantis, whose tomb is located somewhere in South American mountains. Pierre DuPont is rival French archeologist hired by Natla to recover the second piece of the Scion. Francis Folly. Pierre DuPont: This dangerous hireling stalks Lara Croft through the labyrinths of St.

He double-crosses her early in the game and manages to track her down to Egypt later on. Larson: One of Natla's henchmen, Larson is the trigger-happy American who first brings Lara Croft into contact with Natla. At the start of the game, she contacts Lara to find the mysterious Scion artifact for her in Peru. Jacqueline Natla: A wealthy businesswoman and the owner of Natla Technologies.

Lara Croft: The heroine of the game, Lara Croft is a British archeologist working for hire to recover lost artifacts, whether from tombs, or the clutches of selfish collectors.