Tomb Raider

Core Design / Eidos · Since 1996

The series that brought 3D exploration and a female action lead to the mainstream. Core Design's 1996 Tomb Raider made Lara Croft a global icon and pioneered atmospheric third-person platforming through ancient ruins.

Tomb Raider originated at the British studio Core Design, where production began in 1994 and ran about 18 months on a budget of roughly £440,000. The initial concept and the character of Lara Croft came from lead artist Toby Gard, who is credited as her creator; Lara drew on influences as varied as the comic heroine Tank Girl, Indiana Jones, and the cinema of Hong Kong action. Published by Eidos Interactive, the first game released in 1996 — initially on the Sega Saturn, quickly followed by MS-DOS and PlayStation versions — and was praised for its innovative 3D graphics, controls, and gameplay. What set Tomb Raider apart was its realisation of genuine three-dimensional exploration at a moment when most games were still finding their footing in 3D. Lara moved through large, vertical, architecturally complex environments — tombs, caverns, and ruins — that emphasised navigation, puzzle-solving, and a distinctive sense of isolation and atmosphere, punctuated by combat against animals and human enemies. The third-person camera and acrobatic movement gave players a physical sense of clambering, jumping, and swimming through ancient spaces that felt genuinely new. The first six Tomb Raider games were all developed by Core Design, and Lara Croft rapidly became one of the most recognisable characters in the medium and beyond — a marketing and cultural phenomenon who appeared on magazine covers, in advertising, and eventually in Hollywood films, while also becoming a focus of long-running debate about the sexualisation of female characters in games. After the sixth entry met a mixed reception in 2003, development of the main series passed to the American studio Crystal Dynamics, which has handled it since. Commercially the franchise has been one of the industry's biggest, selling well over 100 million units across its history and generating close to $1.2 billion in revenue by 2002 alone. Its historical importance is as a landmark in the transition to 3D and as the game that proved a female protagonist could anchor a blockbuster action franchise — a template for the cinematic action-adventure that many later series, including its own rebooted incarnations, would follow.