Tomb Raider turned 20 years old
On October 25, 1996, Tomb Raider, the first game in a series of action-adventure games about the adventures of an English aristocrat Lara Croft, appeared on store shelves. App2Top.ru together with the collective blog “Cuffs of a Game Designer” and the website 80.lv congratulates Lara on her twentieth birthday.
Alexander Semenov is the publishing editor App2Top.ru
It’s rarely talked about, but Tomb Raider is one of the pillars of action—adventure.
Involuntarily, a comparison comes with Sid Meyer’s Civilization, the basics of the 4X strategy genre, or Need for Speed, the central title in the niche of arcade racing. So it is here. This is a constantly reborn phoenix, a name whose relevance and importance within the genre has not faded for, it’s scary to say, almost a quarter of a century.
Sales of both the first and the last part, released literally last year, are estimated in millions of boxes and digital versions sold. Spears about the advantages and disadvantages of the series have been broken and continue to ring against each other with pain for tender minds and ears. But what else does the brand need to prove: it is alive and feels great.
It is a rare case, but, as in the early noughties, when the series, by the way, almost slipped into self-repetition, a film is being made based on its motives. And they argue about it no less than about every series after its release (and today about DLC, for example, the wonderful and 100% adventure Blood Ties to Rise of the Tomb Raider was not to everyone’s taste).
Blood Ties
All this brings back to the idea of how serious and significant the brand could be created by the British from Core Design, who released with the support of Eidos back in 1996 (let me remind you, that year sales of the first DVDs and players began in Japan, during the US presidential election Bill Clinton was re-elected for a second term, and in Russia The First Chechen War is coming to an end) a game about a busty girl fighting with the goddess of the lost Atlantis.
Today, completely different people and companies are working on the series. The development has moved to the United States, and the publisher is the Japanese from Square Enix. And the hypersexuality of the heroine, along with the general visual convention of the series, gave way to realism and more plot elaboration. But despite this, the project continues to be an adventure, finely balancing between action, postcard views, mysticism, horror and mythology.
As for the favorite part, this is Legend, the lightest game of the series, with which my acquaintance with the brand began in 2005.
Total sales of copies of all games in the series, excluding downloads of shareware mobile projects, amount to more than 45 million.Sergey Gimelreich — producer of ORC WORK
What has always attracted me in the whole series (not counting, of course, the outstanding parts of the main character) is the right combination of exploration, puzzles and action.
Tomb Raider in its best performance is a great cocktail with perfect taste qualities, strong enough and leaving a good aftertaste for many years.
If we talk about my favorites, then this is, of course, the original Tomb Raider and the sequel — Tomb Raider II. In my opinion, it was very successful, he managed to preserve all the qualities of the previous game, at the same time improving the graphics and gameplay.
Render for Tomb Raider II
I remember with pleasure the correctly constructed complexity, the magnificent design of the levels (just remember Venice, the opera house, the destroyed ship Maria Doria).
Despite the fact that in the second part the level design was simpler, it had some insanity (I wanted to write a highlight, but it turned out to be more accurate).
I think that’s what made the game balanced in terms of gameplay. Oh yes, Lara also learned how to use flares in this part and expanded the arsenal of weapons and outfits.
If I’m not mistaken, the game was also one of the longest in terms of passing.
From 1996 to 2015, 16 named projects were released under the Tomb Raider brand (we are not talking about ports and satellite games). The time interval of more than a year between the parts was only in 2004, 2005, 2009, 2011 and 2012. Nikita Filatov — Cloud Castle game designer
I think the original Tomb Raider is the best part of the series.
He was a masterpiece of level design (although during the first passage, of course, I did not know such words).
Architecture, scale, the flight of designers’ thoughts…
This is what Tomb Raider I looked like on older devices 20 years ago
It was breathtaking in those days.
What only the Monastery of St. Francis was worth — a dizzying vertical level in which the slightest mistake in jumping could lead to a long flight to the very bottom.
The meeting with the giant Tyrannosaurus remained in my memory as one of the strongest gaming experiences.
The only complaint was the discrepancy between the forms of Miss Croft on the cover of the disc and the harsh triangular game reality.
Taking into account additions and small projects, such as two-dimensional platformers, battlers and runners, about 30 projects were released under the Tomb Raider/Lara Croft brand. Two films were shot, a TV series, 4 comic book series and 4 books were written.Kirill Tokarev — Editor-in-Chief 80.lv
The tomb raider went beyond the usual ghetto of video games, appearing in movies, in adult films, in literature, becoming one of the symbols of the time.
It is unlikely that Toby Gard, who invented the legendary character, could count on such success. The main success and happiness of Lara is that she is loved. And it’s not just about devoted fans or calculating cosplayers, but about the touching paternal attitude on the part of developers and publishers. It’s great that Tomb Raider ended up in the hands of Square Enix – one of those rare companies that really understands the value of a good character and knows how to handle it. Thanks to this love (I would like to say disinterested, but not this time), Lara is experiencing another takeoff. A career in cinema didn’t work out, comics didn’t take off, but games about a brave girl with lush breasts are still interesting. It’s nice to know that this interest remains one of the few permanent things in our changing world.
Happy birthday and love!
The series now has two universes supported by the publisher — the classic one, in which Lara runs around in a turquoise top (new games within this universe are released under the name Lara Croft) and a new, conditionally realistic one (these games are released under the name Tomb Raider).Barisbi Alborov — Narrative Designer at Creative Mobile
Lady Croft is an amazing woman who not only refused to stay in the past, but also managed to succeed in the present in three guises at once.
Tomb Raider from Crystal Dynamics brings pleasure to fans of spectacular blockbusters, Lara Croft series games allow friends to have fun solving inventive puzzles, and Lara Croft Go has settled on our mobile devices in all its beauty and elegance.
Happy birthday, Lady Croft! Thank you for everything you do for us.
