Tomb Raider (1996)

Tomb Raider - featuring Lara Croft
Studio	Core design
Publisher	Eidos Interactive
Erstveröffent- lichung	1996 2003 (N-Gage)
platform	Android , iOS , Mac OS , MS-DOS , N-Gage , PlayStation , Sega Saturn , Windows Mobile , Zodiac (PalmOS)
genre	Action adventure
Game mode	Single player
control	Mouse, keyboard, gamepad
medium	CD-ROM , download
language	German English
Age rating	USK PEGI
information	The “Director's Cut” version of Tomb Raider contains four additional levels.

Tomb Raider (also Tomb Raider - featuring Lara Croft or Tomb Raider Classic to differentiate it from the 2013 reorientation ) is an action-adventure computer game and the first part of the Tomb Raider series . The game was developed by Core Design and published by Eidos Interactive . Tomb Raider was released for Sega Saturn in the winter of 1996 , and four weeks later for DOS and PlayStation .

In the first part of the series, the player must try to find an artifact called Scion , which was divided into three parts many millennia ago and hidden in different parts of the world.

action

Archaeologist Lara Croft is hired by industrialist Jacqueline Natla to find an ancient artifact called Scion in Peru . Lara fights her way through the catacombs of the ancient city of Vilcabamba , under which dinosaurs still exist in a lush green valley, and finally finds the circular, mysterious artifact in the grave of Qualopec. However, she is surprised by Larson, a hit man who was also hired by Natla. Lara learns that other parts of the Scion exist and breaks into a Natla Corporation office building. There she finds records that refer to the monastery of St. Francis (listed in the game as "St. Francis' Folly", not clearly attributable to Francis of Assisi ) in Greece.

St. Francis' Folly extends through a coliseum and a cistern to the palace of the legendary King Midas , under which lies the tomb of Tihocan. There Lara finds the second part of the Scion after numerous firefights with Pierre, another one of Natla's killers, and a centaur . When she touches it, she learns in a kind of vision that the Scion is an ancient, Atlantean artifact and that the rulers of the sunken kingdom carried out genetic experiments on their people.

Lara finds the last part of the Scion in the city of Khamoon in Egypt . When she takes it, she is surprised and disarmed by Natla's henchmen. Natla takes the Scion while Lara just barely gets away with her life. However, she can sneak aboard Natla's yacht and get unnoticed on a nameless island on which is the entrance to the great pyramid of Atlantis. After long fights with Natla's henchmen, from whom Lara gradually gets back her stolen weapons, Lara finally reaches the core chamber of the pyramid, in which the Scion is enthroned and supplies the city with energy and stability.

When Lara touches the Scion, another vision appears in which she learns that Qualopec and Tihocan as well as Natla herself are the three rulers of the sunken continent Atlantis. The three - whose origins are never fully clarified (while Qualopec and Tihocan appear robotic and only remotely humanoid, Natla is the only one who appears completely human) - have carried out genetic experiments on the inhabitants of Atlantis. One result of this was, for example, the centaur that Lara shot in Greece. Furthermore, she learns in the vision that Qualopec and Tihocan have at some point opposed Natla, whose experiments went too far for both of them, it seems: They sealed Natla in a wheel-like object and froze her there in a sphere. How Natla was released from her captivity was seen at the beginning of the game; however, the connection is only now becoming apparent.

When Lara wants to destroy the Scion, she is attacked by Natla. After a scuffle, Natla apparently falls to her death, while Lara lands on an arena-like platform where she has to fight a gigantic, legless monster. Upon the death of the bred superstition, the Scion appears to become unstable. Lara defeats it with her weapons and escapes from the pyramid, which sinks into a lava lake without the control of the Scion. Natla reappears and reveals her true appearance: a demonic being with wings.

Whether the player kills Natla is optional - after all, Lara manages to escape from the pyramid and flee with Natla's yacht before the pyramid collapses and the last ruler of Atlantis and her genetic experiments are forever buried under her.

Gameplay

In Tomb Raider , the player controls the protagonist Lara Croft from a third-person perspective . The virtual world in which the player moves is kept entirely in 3D computer graphics . The environment is modeled in rough blocks, from which it is possible to climb onto higher blocks, provided they are not too high, to swim and dive or to reach one's goal by jumping. In many passages it is necessary to use Lara's acrobatic skills to advance in the game.

Possible opponents (mostly animals like wolves, bears or even dinosaurs) attack Lara, but can be killed by shelling. With her guns drawn, Lara automatically aims at the nearest enemy, which makes fire fights much easier. Weapons such as two pistols (ambidextrous), magnums, shotguns or uzis are available. The weakest weapons, the two pistols, are Lara's standard armament in all Tomb Raider games and have an infinite supply of ammunition. For all other weapons there are ammunition packages lying around in the area, with which you can replenish your ammunition supply.

Attacking opponents and jumps from great heights as well as various, frequently occurring traps weaken Lara's health, which the player can improve again with medipacks, whereby there are large and small medipacks, each with different health strengths.

In general, the aim of the game is to cross a level, which is made more difficult by traps, enemies and some puzzles. After each level a statistic is shown that provides information about the number of enemies killed, for example.

Differences in publications

There are a few differences between the Saturn / PlayStation version and the PC

• With the Saturn / PlayStation version you can only save in the vicinity of memory points, which are blue crystals floating above the ground, while in the PC version you can save freely.
• The PlayStation version offers additional music titles that are not available in the PC version.
• For PC publishing there are different versions of the "TOMB.EXE" file to run Tomb Raider. In addition to the main "TOMB.EXE", adapted variants for graphics cards from the companies 3Dfx, Matrox Mystique, PowerVR, Rendition, ATI and S3 were offered.

Production notes

The development of Tomb Raider began in 1993. The development team of Core Design consisted of six people, above all Toby Gard , who is considered to be the inventor of Lara Croft. The character Lara Croft went through several development phases in which fundamental changes were made. At the beginning the protagonist should be male. However, the developers wanted to produce a really original character and so it was decided to let a woman play the leading role. The character was initially called Laura Cruz and was a South American. However, the name has been changed. The name Lara Croft comes from the phone book. Lara developers leafed through it looking for a name. Lara was given larger than average breasts, the developers wanted to make the game more interesting for men.

The 2007 part Tomb Raider: Anniversary is a remake of the first part of the Tomb Raider series.

reception

• 1998: Origins Award : Best Action Game 1997

Web links

• Tomb Raider Unfinished Business ( July 9, 1998 memento on the Internet Archive ) Website of the developer Core Design for Tomb Raider (1998, archived)
• Tomb Raider at MobyGames (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} http://www.cubeit.com/ctimes/news0007b.htm ( Memento from February 12, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
2. ↑ http://www.cubeit.com/ctimes/news0007a.htm ( Memento from February 12, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
3. ↑ List of Winners, 1997 ( English ) Archived from the original on May 29, 2007. Retrieved on September 3, 2013.