Tomb Raider (series)

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This article is about the series. For the game, see Tomb Raider.
The original Tomb Raider logo and the current Tomb Raider logo
 
The original Tomb Raider logo and the current Tomb Raider logo
The original Tomb Raider logo and the current Tomb Raider logo

Tomb Raider is a series of video games, comic books, novels and movies, centring around the adventures of the female fictional British archaeologist Lara Croft. Since the release of the original Tomb Raider in 1996, the series developed into a lucrative franchise of related media, and Lara went on to become a major icon of the video game industry. The Guinness Book of World Records has recognised Lara Croft as the "Most Successful Human Videogame Heroine" in 2006. Six games in the series were developed by Core Design, and the latest two by Crystal Dynamics. All the games were published by Eidos Interactive, which holds the rights to the Tomb Raider trademark and characters of the franchise. To date two movies, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider and Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life, have been produced starring American actress Angelina Jolie as Lara Croft. The Tomb Raider video games have together sold over 35 million units,[citation needed] making it one of the highest selling video game series of all time.[citation needed] The highest selling Lara Croft game was Tomb Raider II, which sold over 8 million units.[citation needed] They all have a close relationship in terms of style to Indiana Jones.

Contents

[edit] Lara Croft

Main article: Lara Croft

The central character in Tomb Raider is the sexy, no-nonsense, British archaeologist Lara Croft, a female character similar to Indiana Jones in search of ancient treasures.

Lara's evolution through the Tomb Raider series. From left: Tomb Raider I, II, III, The Last Revelation, Chronicles, The Angel of Darkness, Legend, Anniversary, Underworld.
Lara's evolution through the Tomb Raider series.
From left: Tomb Raider I, II, III, The Last Revelation, Chronicles, The Angel of Darkness, Legend, Anniversary, Underworld.

Lara was created by one-time Core designer Toby Gard, and grew out of a number of ideas discarded in early concepts. She appears almost invariably with brown shorts, a blue top, holsters on both sides of her hip for dual wielded pistols and a small brown backpack. Over the course of the series, she has undergone minor adjustments, such as smoother facial features, enlarged (and later reduced) breast size and free moving hair.

Several real-life persons have taken on the role of portraying Lara Croft in flesh, most notably British actresses Nell McAndrew (who was an official model) and Rhona Mitra (in the early days of the games' success), and American actress Angelina Jolie in the Tomb Raider movies. In addition, playing Lara at game conventions is a popular type of modelling work. Karima Adebibe is the current official portrayer of Lara.

Ten years after the release of the original game, Lara is still one of the most durable and recognisable video game characters. Alternatively viewed as a feminist icon or a sexist stereotype, the impact of her character on popular culture is undeniable.

[edit] Continuities

There are two different continuities to the game series. The first encompassing the first six games, and the second starting with Legend and including Anniversary. Although Anniversary is a remake of the original Tomb Raider, the story has been revised to fit into the second continuity, although plot elements present in Tomb Raider Legend are not explicitly referenced.

The first continuity is often referred to as the Core Design continuity and the second is usually referred to as the Crystal Dynamics continuity, based on the company that developed each game. Differences between the continuities are particularly apparent in Lara Croft’s backstory, as well as her personality. Croft Manor also looks extremely different between the continuities. It could also be stated that there are additional continuities in the Tomb Raider series as the movies and comic books have significant differences from the games. For example, in the first continuity and in the comics, Lara lost both her parents and her fiancée in a plane crash that occurred during her early-twenties. However, in the second continuity, it is noted that this crash happened when she was nine, and she lost her mother as an indirect result of the crash. Both the second continuity and the film continuity mention the loss of her father in Cambodia.

The second continuity borrows some elements from the films. For example, the layout of Croft Manor in both Legend and Anniversary is extremely similar to that featured in the films.

[edit] Game features

The original game, titled Tomb Raider, made its début on the Sega Saturn, PlayStation and PC. Released first on the Playstation,[verification needed] it was one of the titles responsible for PlayStation success in the mid 90s. The games present a world in 3D: a series of tombs, and other locations, through which the player must guide Lara. 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 artefact. In later games, Lara's targets become predominantly human, which has sparked some criticism from gamers who feel the games became too violent.[citation needed]

Tomb Raider is an earlier example of the 3D genre. The game is a third-person shooter since Lara is always visible. The player's camera follows her, usually over her shoulder or from behind. Up until Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness, the game was characterised by the cubic nature of the world in which Lara inhabits. Ledges, walls and ceilings sit at 90 degrees to each other, although the game designers use some clever tricks to make this less obvious.

A reason for this orthogonality can be explained by the fact the creators took the 2D platform game genre and extended it to a 3D world. This is shown through Tomb Raider's gameplay, which is very reminiscent of older platform games like Prince of Persia and Flashback that had a heavy focus on timed jumping interspersed with combat. Each game has introduced new weapons and moves; by the fourth game, Lara could backflip off ropes and turn around in mid-air to grab a ledge behind her. Tomb Raider: Legend introduced an electromagnetic grapple that Lara can attach to metal objects and can, amongst other things, be used make rope swings and pull metal objects (and enemies) toward her.

Standard moves in Lara's range of abilities include the somersault, a roll, climbing techniques, the ability to swim, a swan dive manoeuvre, and a handstand. The last two abilities are purely aesthetic and serve no other function in the game. In Tomb Raider III, a sprinting move was introduced that allowed Lara to quickly speed up while a bar in the lower corner of the screen drained her stamina. In Tomb Raider: Chronicles, Lara was able to somersault/roll out of crawl spaces higher than ground level.

The storyline is usually driven by the quest for a powerful artefact, with Lara in a race against a sinister shadow league who want to obtain the relic for their own purposes. These artefacts usually possess mystical powers and may be of supernatural, or even alien, origin. Often in the series, the antagonist uses the artefact or bits of it to create terrifying mystical monsters, creatures, and mutants in which Lara must defeat throughout the journey.

[edit] List of Tomb Raider games

[edit] Charts

The following versions have been released so far, listed in chronological order:

Main Games

Upcoming Games:

Other Games:

[edit] Tomb Raider Level Editor

The Tomb Raider level editor, Room Editor, is a tool released by Eidos Interactive with the video game Tomb Raider Chronicles in late 2000. Later, it was made available free to download off the Internet. Since then it has enabled players to design new levels of their own, set in locations from the original games or in new locations.

[edit] Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Action Adventure

An interactive DVD was released by Bright Entertainment [1] under license from Eidos in 2006, called Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Action Adventure. The game takes advantage of standard DVD player audiovisual capabilities, and the remote control. It has puzzles and action elements, while the story is based on The Angel of Darkness.

[edit] Crystal Dynamics' 10th anniversary remake

On June 16 2006, Eidos announced that Crystal Dynamics was working on a 10th anniversary remake of the original Tomb Raider for PS2, PSP, and PC.[1] The game uses an enhanced Tomb Raider Legend game engine. Eidos's head of brand management Larry Sparks said it is "a one-off title" that would appeal to existing Tomb Raider fans, as well as attract new ones. The game was released on June 5 2007 (June 1 in Europe) on PC and PS2 under the title of Tomb Raider: Anniversary, and the PSP version was released on August 7 2007. More recently the game was released on the Xbox 360 on October 23 2007 (October 26 in Europe), and the Nintendo Wii version was released on November 13 2007.

[edit] Future instalments

After the success of Legend (more than 2.6 million units sold worldwide in five weeks[2]), Crystal Dynamics are planning an eighth instalment in the Tomb Raider series. (See Lara Croft Tomb Raider: Underworld)

[edit] Music

Main article: Music of Tomb Raider series

The basic instrumentation for the Tomb Raider scores is orchestral, though the games adopt different instrumentation and tone with each instalment in the series. The majority of Tomb Raider music has been created using electronic technology, such as samples and synthesizers (though the Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness soundtrack was performed by the London Symphony Orchestra).[3]

Composers:

[edit] Movies

The idea of Tomb Raider was extended beyond being just a video game, including the 2001 movie Lara Croft: Tomb Raider and the 2003 sequel Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life, both starring Angelina Jolie.

A fair percentage of fans[who?] of the game argue that the movie adaptations are a poor tribute to their video game heritage, though Jolie, after some initial published criticism mostly centred around her being an American playing a British character, was considered an ideal choice for the role of Lara Croft.

[edit] Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001)

Main article: Lara Croft: Tomb Raider

A member of a rich British aristocratic family, Lara Croft is a "tomb raider" who enjoys collecting ancient artifacts from ruins of temples, cities, etc. worldwide, and doesn't mind going through death-defying dangers to get them. She is skilled in hand-to-hand combat, weapons training, and foreign languages - and does them all in tight outfits.

The planets of the solar system are going into astronomical conjunction (which occurs every 5,000 years), and a secret society called the Illuminati is seeking an ancient talisman called The Triangle of Light that gives its possessor the ability to control time. The Illuminati need a certain clock/key called the All-seeing Eye to help them in their search, and they have to find it in one week or wait for the next planetary alignment to find it again which will be in another 5,000 years. Lara happens to find the All-seeing Eye hidden in a wall of her mansion. The Illuminati steal it, and Lara gets an old letter from Lord Richard Croft, her deceased father, telling her about the society's agenda (Her father was a defected member, who hid the key). Now, she must retrieve the key and find and destroy the talisman before the Illuminati can get their hands on it.

[edit] Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life (2003)

Main article: Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life

Lara Croft returns in the sequel to the original video game based film. This time, she is trying to find Pandora's Box which supposedly contains one of the deadliest plagues on Earth, before evil scientist Jonathan Reiss can get his hands on it. The key to finding the Box, which is hidden in the mysterious Cradle of Life, is an orb that is supposed to be some type of a map. When Croft goes to get the orb, it is stolen by Reiss' henchman and so she recruits an old friend, Terry Sheridan, a former mercenary who spent his last couple of years in prison in Siberia, to come to help. Lara and Terry embark together on an adventure that spans continents in an attempt to regain the orb.

[edit] Comic books

Main article: Tomb Raider (comics)

Tomb Raider has been licensed to Top Cow Productions, which has published a large number of Tomb Raider stories in comic book form since 1999. The series ended in 2004 with the release of its final and fiftieth comic book.

[edit] Original novels

Ballantine Books, in conjunction with Eidos, began publishing a series of original novels in the spring of 2004, beginning with The Amulet of Power by Mike Resnick, which was followed by The Lost Cult by E. E. Knight in August 2004 and then The Man of Bronze by James Alan Gardner in January 2005. They generally followed the continuity of the video games (particularly Angel of Darkness) rather than the movies, although Lost Cult contained references to Cradle of Life. Man of Bronze differs from the first two books in that it is told in first-person narrative from Lara Croft's point of view.

Ballantine's contract only called for three novels, and it is not yet known if the book series will continue.

[edit] Animation

Main article: Re\Visioned: Tomb Raider Animated Series

GameTap aired a ten part animated short series called "Re\Visioned: Tomb Raider Animated Series" from July 10th, 2007 to November 13th, 2007. The series is comprised of various artistic talent's renditions of Lara Croft. Minnie Driver provides the voice for Lara Croft.

[edit] References

  1. ^ SCi Entertainment (03/11/2006). "EIDOS CELEBRATES WITH LARA CROFT TOMB RAIDER: ANNIVERSARY". Press release. Retrieved on 4/11/2006.
  2. ^ SCi Entertainment (19-05-2006). "Trading Update". Press release. Retrieved on 4-11-2006.
  3. ^ Starpulse. Credits for AoD. Lara Croft: Tomb Raider The Angel of Darkness (PlayStation 2) Credits. Starpulse. Retrieved on 2008-04-02.

[edit] External links

v • d • e
Tomb Raider series
Video games
1st continuity
Core Design
Tomb Raider (1996) • Unfinished Business (1998) • Tomb Raider II (1997) • Golden Mask (1998) • Tomb Raider III (1998) • Lost Artifact (1998) • The Last Revelation (1999) • Chronicles (2000) • The Angel of Darkness (2003)
2nd continuity
Crystal Dynamics
Legend (2006) • Anniversary (2007) • Underworld (2008)
Game Boy games
Tomb Raider (2000) • Curse of the Sword (2001) • The Prophecy (2002)
Film/Animation
Characters
Music
Composers
Nathan McCree (1996-1998) • Peter Connelly (1999-2003) • Martin Iveson (collaborator) Troels Brun Folmann (2006-present)
Miscellaneous