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)

The original - the best?

The Good
Tomb Raider's beauty lies in the level design - usually very simple, but giving off a very natural atmosphere, in places (most notably the Lost Valley) really giving the impression that people had lived and died there. Combat is more or less well executed, given the limited nature of the controls - Lara can jump and somersault around to effectively avoid oncoming foes. There are niggles (see below) but by and large it works well enough.

Graphically, the game has been left way behind by more modern games, but still exerts a particular charm. Somewhat humorously, the polygon count on Lara's most...ahem...prized assets is rather low, leaving the impression that Lara could spear her enemies by jumping on them with her breasts. Still, Lara as a whole still looks good, enemies (especially the T-Rex) look great and the backgrounds look natural. The textures don't look overly washed out, and the game looks great when using a DOS Glide wrapper like dgVoodoo.

The soundtrack is haunting and atmospheric, and the sound effects are crystal clear even by today's standards. The sparse nature of the sound, with the makers preferring to pass on using bombastic orchestral music, instead using subtle musical keys and effectively using sound effects to signal coming events, is in my opinion one of the most effective uses of sound ever in the history of gaming.

The Bad
The game looks and sounds great, and the level design is unbeaten, so it's fine if you're just watching the game. However, when you come to actually play it, you'll realise that the controls have been overtaken drastically in the years since. Lara is quite a pain to control at times, with her slow turns and sometimes lethargic reaction to the controls.

Tomb Raider is also a little repetitive at times, especially in the early levels, which rely heavily on a lot of searching for obscure items. While the level layouts are not hugely difficult to learn, a lot of the first four levels looks identical and it can be difficult to maintain your attention.

The Bottom Line
Tomb Raider 1, for its time, was an absolute marvel. The gameplay spawned a whole new genre of 3D platformers and still hasn't really been beaten today, even by its own sequels, especially more the most recent ones. Proof of this is Eidos' intention to release an "anniversary" edition of the game - updated graphics, sound and production values, but at heart the same old Lara.

DOS · by jamyskis (332) · 2007

Substance and style...at first.

The Good
Released just as Nintendo's Super Mario 64 was showing gamers just how well true 3D could be done, Tomb Raider was the first true-3D, free-roaming action game for both the PlayStation and the Saturn.

The game put you in the short shorts of Lara Croft, a female Indiana Jones with a debutante background and a shady employer. Her mission is to locate the Scion, a legendary artifact of great power.

The graphics are better than you'd expect from a second-generation title, a bit blocky and crude in some respects, but the environments and levels themselves are HUGE, obviously pushing the limits of the PlayStation's RAM. (the Colosseum comes to mind). Water and other effects are done surprisingly well. And they all take great advantage of being in true 3D, with multi-tiered halls and high architecture. Core Design created an engine that was about two years ahead of its time, and while it has some rough edges, it definitely provided the most epic settings on the PSX at the time.

Sound is dead-on as far as effects go; the first time you are surprised by a bear from behind you WILL jump thirty feet in the air and rip your controller out. TR also approaches music fairly uniquely. Most of the game takes place in silence, with 45-60 seconds stings of dramatic orchestral music occurring when you enter a climactic battle sequence, or mysterious music when you enter a section of the tomb vital to the level.

Of course, what made Tomb Raider famous (and as I will explain later, infamous) is it's control and gameplay. Overall, the control for TR is fairly intuitive. Lara defaults to running with the D-pad, but you can make her walk with a shoulder button, and while walking she will stop at ledges and not fall off. The rest of the buttons are fairly mundane, draw weapons, jump, action (for grabbing onto ledges and picking up items) and sidesteps. Also unique is the quick roll, where Lara collapses onto the ground and quickly gets up again facing the opposite direction. Doesn't seem very useful on paper, but after about the third time you narrowly escape an Indiana-Jones sized boulder, you'll be glad it's there. When underwater, Lara controls almost like a flight simulator. Camera work is fairly stable, with a fixed above-behind perspective except during action sequences or when you order Lara to "look" around (you cannot move in first-person mode, however).

The gameplay generally follows the conventions of old-school dungeon crawlers, where you go through the level finding keys in hard-to-reach places that open doors to the next area. Also, you will often pull switches that open doors, alter some level area to make it passable, or occasionally trigger a booby trap.

Combat is a little odd in this game. Your basic weapon is a set of twin pistols with unlimited ammo, and along the way you will pick up a bad-ass shotgun and two Uzis that you wield John-Woo style. These must be fed with ammo, conveniently found strewn carelessly all over the old tombs and caverns. When you draw your guns, Lara becomes unable to grab ledges or pick things up, and automatically aims at the nearest enemy. You dodge around and shoot until the enemy is dead, then Lara will target the next one. Combat is rather hectic and haphazard, especially when fighting large groups of wolves and such, but serves as a welcome diversion from the otherwise slow pace of the game.

The Bad
While Lara herself and the environments in the game are beautifully rendered, the various animals and human enemies are very primitive and minimalist. The bear in particular looks like...sh*t. The aliens in the last few levels look like deformed humans turned inside-out. It would be scary if they were as meticulously modeled, as in say, Silent Hill, but that is not the case.

The game also has some scattered issues with positioning of Lara when she tries to manipulate switches or pick things up, which has to be done perfectly for the game to detect you want to open this door and kick in with the corresponding animation. This shouldn't be a big deal, were it not for the many "flip this switch, and run like hell to flip the other one before you die" challenges, where a pixel's worth of misalignment will result in an ugly death.

Also, the physics are a bit out of whack. Enemies will collapse through walls when shot, and if you shoot an alligator or rat and then drain the water, they will remain there, levitating Copperfield style in the air.

The Bottom Line
Rather than post seperate reviews for all the TR games, I'll give it to ya right here. All the other TR games in the series are basically the same as this, the only differences being varied, improved environments, and a new move or weapon here and there. If you've played one Tomb Raider game, you've pretty much played 'em all. So while the original game was a groundbreaker, and the second and third were decent sequels, the series as a whole has gotten very stale and over-marketed. So buy and play one Tomb Raider game (looking at them objectively, TR4: Last Revelation is probably the best), and maybe another if you like them. Then stop.

PlayStation · by Anatole (58) · 2001

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.