TOMB RAIDER IS OFFICIALLY TWENTY FIVE YEARS OLD

[ 25 October 2021 ]

Today marks twenty five years since Tomb Raider released on the Sega Saturn. The original Tomb Raider, starring British archaeologist Lara Croft, was developed by Derbyshire-based studio Core Design and released on October 25, 1996. Tomb Raider has gone on to become a powerful franchise, spawning eleven mainline entries, three motion pictures starring Academy Award-winning actresses Angelina Jolie and Alicia Vikander, a number of Lara Croft spin-off games, promotional crossovers and a steady stream of merchandise.

Tomb Raider 25, a celebration of 25 years of Lara Croft and Tomb Raider, has been in full swing since February and current Tomb Raider developer Crystal Dynamics has released a steady stream of assets each month to compliment their retrospective look at Tomb Raider past and present. The studio will celebrate the official 25-year milestone on October 28 to allow Eidos Montreal space to promote Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy.

Assets released so far as part of Tomb Raider 25 include an alternate opening cinematic for Tomb Raider, re-imagined signature artwork from the likes of Brenoch Adams, Andy Park and Yoshitaka Amano among other amazing contributors, developer and design documents, style guides plus multiple gigabytes of artwork and video content, much of which was previously unpublished. To help organise and take stock of celebratory Tomb Raider assets we released the Tomb Raider 25 Asset Tracker, providing direct links to every piece of content released since February.

Crystal Dynamics has stated official celebrations of a quarter century of Tomb Raider will continue well into 2022. We look forward to keeping our readers updated throughout the 25th anniversary of Lara Croft and Tomb Raider and beyond. In the meantime, enjoy the original opening cinematic from Tomb Raider, running on MS-DOS with scan lines to boot. This is where it all began, 25 years ago today.

Tomb Raider 25