Tomb Raider

aka: TR1, Tomb Raider I, Tomb Raider en vedette Lara Croft, Tomb Raider featuring Lara Croft, Tomb Raider starring Lara Croft, Tomb Raiders
Moby ID: 348
DOS Specs
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Description official descriptions

Lara Croft is a Tomb Raider, an archaeologist who explores ancient sites in search of valuable artifacts, who is hired to retrieve an artifact from a tomb in Peru, which turns out to be one of three parts of the Atlantean Scion. Soon betrayed by her employer, Lara Croft travels to Greece, Rome and Egypt to recover the other parts before this powerful device falls into the wrong hands.

Tomb Raider is a 3D action game with platforming and puzzle-solving elements, in which players control Lara Croft from a third-person perspective. The camera follows Lara as she climbs, jumps, and swims through detailed environs overcoming environmental obstacles and deadly fauna. Moving through levels often involves finding spots where Lara can climb, looking for spots where Lara can use her acrobatic ability, and sliding blocks and pushing levers to solve puzzles and open passageways.

Lara is armed with twin pistols with infinite ammunition, but she can pick up higher caliber weapons to take on deadlier human opponents. Lara also comes across restorative health packs and has a compass with which she can orient herself. Lara’s opponents include animals, gunmen, as well as primeval and supernatural beings. Careful explorers can also find secret areas and avoid traps.

Spellings

  • トゥームレイダース - Japanese spelling
  • 古墓丽影 - Simplified Chinese spelling
  • 古墓奇兵 - Traditional Chinese spelling

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Credits (DOS version)

67 People (43 developers, 24 thanks) · View all

Lead Programmer
Lead Graphic Artist
Programmers
Graphic Artists
Additional Programming
Additional Artwork
Music
Sound effects
Script
Original Concept
Executive Producer
Voice talents (FR)
Producer
QA
[ full credits ]

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 86% (based on 71 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.8 out of 5 (based on 322 ratings with 14 reviews)

Great Game, Lots of action and adventure.

The Good
Addicted at first, too bad I started taking the game for granted. The 3D graphics are great and everything about this game was revolutionary at the time. Eerie areas.

The Bad
The makers should have spent more time designing the areas than on designing Lara (no comments). Also some of Lara's body parts have taken a liking to dissapearing into walls and blocks.

The Bottom Line
Great Game. 10/10

DOS · by Jim Fun (207) · 2002

Innovative Action Adventure title for the time.....still is in many ways

The Good
When i first played this game back in 1997, it represented the "quantum leap" that next generation gaming promised (at the time) me. The 3D world it provided was begging to be explored.....2D had died with the 16bit era (for the time being)

Onto the review (!). TR basically involves the adventures of a young lady called Lara Croft, who is on a quest to find the Arc of Scion, an ancient artifact. The player travels through 4 different locales solving basic puzzles, fighting man and beast, engaging in platform based action, and exploring for items. Each world is broken into 3 or so sub levels. The locales are nicely varied, and the story is great, however the acting not so great :)

By far the strongest aspect of TR are the environments: They possess a great sense of mystery and wonder, and you cant wait to reveal the next cavernous area or underwater pool. Swimming down into a dark, deep pool is awesome! It should be mentioned that the sense of space is good despite the draw distance being quite small. The makers cleverly blacked out the far distance, which helps to increase the feel of "unfolding" a cave or cavern. It works very well. Overall, the sense of exploration is great. I have yet to find a game since which peaks my desire for finding out what is around the next corner, as what TR did. There is a real "abandoned" mood to a lot of the areas, which some people may find boring, but since the title IS "Tomb Raider", i myself believe tombs should be uninhabited. The use of music is limited to key areas of the game, and this minimalism works a treat, serving to enhance the eerie feel of the levels. Later TR titles got a little more mainstream with miltary zones, cities etc, which is the prime reason my interest decreased with these ,as they just felt like the series trying to be more "Action" based, rather than "Action Adventure"

One last note, which some will disagree on, is the use of fixed save positions. I LIKE this, because getting to the next one requires patience and discipline, and not being able to save every step makes it a bit harder overall. Maybe this is because i grew up in the era of 3 lives and no continues, but nothing beats conquering a hard play area after multiple attempts in ANY game.

Overall, a genre defining game which no serious game fan should not know about, nor appreciate for its revolutionary design and play mechanics

The Bad
The controls. By far the most annoying aspect to this game is the clunky control system. Lara moves nothing like the lithe young lady she is portrayed as. However, we must bear in mind that at the time, the sense of freedom was great, and my opinion in born out of being spoilt in the years since with control schemes of the current generation of games.

One other aspect is the difficulty of the puzzle sections of the game. They are not overly taxing, and this was probably done to appeal to a wider audience. However, some more hardcore puzzles probably should have been included in order to find extra items etc..

Overall I Believe the control system is the games only real flaw.

The Bottom Line
Atmospheric, challenging game, with minor control issues.

PlayStation · by Anton Tadich (2) · 2007

Breath taking

The Good
In my honest opinion this is perhaps THE best example of a 'proper' next generation game.

Before Tomb Raider there was nothing (to my knowlegde) that came before that had taken the adventure genre to an entirely new level. Upgrading from a Sega Megadrive, playing Tomb Raider back in 1996 was a giant leap in my gaming experience.

You'll never forget the first time the huge T-Rex comes stomping out of the shadows. One particular scene that always sticks with me is one level where you find yourself climbing what seems to be a huge cliff only for the camera to pan back to find ourself coming out of the enterence of a giant Sphinx! :O)

The music also is superb which adds to the tension and mystery of your surroundings.

The Bad
The sound effects where quite 'weak' on the Sega Saturn.

The Bottom Line
An amazing game from start to finish...although graphically it has aged quite alot.

SEGA Saturn · by Richard Daives (8) · 2005

[ View all 14 player reviews ]

Discussion

Subject By Date
Aged well Donatello (466) Jan 12, 2013
WTH... Tomb Raider Limited Edition? John Smith May 24, 2012
A rather glaring omission. GAMEBOY COLOR! (1990) Nov 9, 2011
Survival horror hribek (28) Mar 17, 2009
I need some help ! GAMEBOY COLOR! (1990) Nov 8, 2008

Trivia

1001 Video Games

Tomb Raider appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.

Cutscenes

In addition to having the soundtrack (well, ambiance sounds are more like it) encoded as redbook audio, Core also recorded as cd tracks the dialogue and sound for all the in-game-engine cutscenes (not the rendered ones), meaning the cutscenes can be listened to on any CD player.

Lara Croft

The main character was originally going to be a man but during production they changed it to a woman, originally named Laura Cruz and later changed to Laura Croft. The design of the protagonist was partially based on Lead Designer Toby Gard's sister, Frances. He originally increased Croft's bust as a joke, but the rest of the team thought it was a good look for her, and it stuck. Gard was, understandably, mortified and allegedly he quit his job at Core Design in 1997 about it.

In succession of the game's release, Laura Croft became a media hype and widely known outside gaming circles. In addition to appearing in magazines, TV, etc... she was also featured in the music video Männer sind Schweine ("Men are pigs") from the German band Die Ärzte and in U2's "POP Mart" in several clips showing her on her bike, and shooting the audience. That's right, on the worlds largest screen.

Level Format

The Tomb Raider level data format has been reverse engineered and it's called TRosettaStone. Each level contains all the data besides the music, so there is level geometry, all models, all textures and sounds; some of the files are repeated several times trough levels.

The levels are composed of blocks. It enables game to have some Sokoban-like puzzles. Each such block can have several triggers in it. The game uses skeletal animation and waypoints for the AI.

Novels

In addition to numerous comics from Top Cow Productions, Lara Croft's cross-promotional adventures have included a trilogy of novels inspired by the games, published by Ballantine Books:

  1. The Amulet of Power (2004), by Mike Resnick;
  2. The Lost Cult (2004) by E. E. Knight; and
  3. The Man of Bronze (2005) by James Alan Gardner.

Nude

There was a rumoured cheat to turn Lara Croft nude. It said that if you tapped out the tune to the Spice Girls song Wannabe on the keyboard Lara would start dancing and then take her clothes off. This one is false. But soon after the release, someone found out how to replace the clothing textures and released a custom "nude patch" (DOS version only of course). It revealed everything and it became a big hype on the net. The patch is still floating around, just search for "nrpa103.zip". Custom nude patches were developed for later Tomb Raider games as well.

Sold-out version

The Sold-out version of this game is missing the audio tracks. There is however a "fix" for this by searching the web for stella's tomb raider site it has tons of info and patches on making this game work and including the missing audio.

Awards

  • Computer Gaming World
    • May 1999 (Issue #178) - Introduced into the Hall of Fame
  • EGM
    • December 1996 (Issue 89) - Game of the Month (PlayStation version) (shared with Street Fighter Alpha 2)
    • March 1997 (Issue 92) - Game of the Year runner up (All Systems) + PlayStation Game of the Year runner-up + Saturn Game of the Year runner-up + Adventure Game of the Year runner-up (PlayStation / Saturn version) + Action Game of the Year runner-up (PlayStation / Saturn version)
    • November 1997 (Issue 100) - ranked #54 (Best 100 Games of All Time) (PSX version)
    • November 1997 (Issue 100) - ranked #3 (Readers' Top 10 Games of All Time) (PSX version)
    • February 2005 (Issue 200) - #35 in the "Greatest Games of Their Time" list
  • GameStar (Germany)
    • Issue 12/1999 - #6 in the "100 Most Important PC Games of the Nineties" ranking
    • Issue 01/2007 - One of the "Ten Most Influential PC Games" (It marks the rising of Lara Croft as first game character which manages to be a long-running brand beyond the video-game industry, even more so than Nintendo's Mario. Lara Croft is also one of the first established female game protagonists in a male-driven industry.)
  • PC Gamer
    • August 2001 (Issue 100) - #86 in the "Top 100 Games of All Time" poll
    • April 2005 - #37 in the "50 Best Games of All Time" list
  • Retro Gamer
    • October 2004 (Issue #9) – #19 Best Game Of All Time (Readers' Vote)
    • Issue 37 - #22 in the "Top 25 Platformers of All Time" poll
  • The Strong National Museum of Play
    • 2018 – Introduced into the World Video Game Hall of Fame
  • Świat Gier Komputerowych
    • February 1997 (Issue #50) – Golden Disk'96 for the best foreign game of 1996


Information also contributed by Adam Baratz, Daniel Fawkes, Big John WV, Evilhead, hribek, Indra was here, PCGamer77, Pseudo_Intellectual, Sciere, shifter and Zovni

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by robotriot.

PS Vita added by GTramp. SEGA Saturn added by Kartanym. PlayStation 3, PSP added by Foxhack. Windows Mobile added by Kabushi. N-Gage added by Jason Walker. PlayStation added by Grant McLellan. Windows added by eWarrior.

Additional contributors: Matthew Bailey, Terrence Bosky, Unicorn Lynx, Syed GJ, Jeanne, Eep², Shoddyan, Alaka, formercontrib, Michael B, ケヴィン, eWarrior, DreinIX, Paulus18950, MZ per X, Patrick Bregger, victorfreitas, Lain Crowley, Karsa Orlong, FatherJack, SoMuchChaotix.

Game added November 1, 1999. Last modified March 17, 2024.