Tuesday, January 8, 2008

History

In the beginning....
A lot can happen in 10 years, and believe me it really did. The Tomb Raider series went from strength to strength starting out as a series of games which later developed into two smash hit movies starring Angelina Jolie as the character we had grown to love. But how did it all begin? Well, the answer begins here, in 1988 when a small Derby based design company by the name of Core Design was first assembled by Mr. Jeremy Heath Smith.The company focused on quality over quantity, slowly expanding their personnel and output of titles as the years passed. Core's first game was seen in 1989. It was a 2D adventure game with a male lead "Rick Dangerous". Rick was an archaeologist who explored the deadly tombs of a Mayan Temple. Battling with baddies to win the prize artefact... Sound familiar?

'Rick Dangerous' First game

A few years later with the increase of technology making bigger and better games possible Jeremy called a meeting with his staff upon hearing news of a brand new games console - The Sony Playstation. The team sat down and started thinking of possible games that could make use of this "miracle machine". Toby Gard was one of the employees with a suggestion... A game called Tomb Raider was what he wanted to see on this new console. Gard had produced drawings of what he felt the game should look like, he explains how some of the other employees thought he was a bit crazy, however that's where the phenomenon known as Tomb Raider started.

Designer - Toby Gard

"Toby stood up and said I've got this idea about doing a game based on pyramids", Says Jeremy Heath-Smith. "I've always wanted to do a game based around pyramids to. For some reason I really fancied this idea about pyramids with a Pharaoh, and having to go tunnel under the pyramids. It was just as silly as that. It didn't have characters, it was more just conceptually let's do a game based on pyramids".

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