Why did Tomb Raider come in a two-disc PlayStation jewel case, despite only having one disc? I need to know.
Mine has a crack in the front but is still holding up nearly twenty years later, the black dyed, green-fronted CD sitting behind it, containing if not one of the greatest games of all time, then the first outing of one of video gaming's most influential and recognizable figures, Lara Croft - and what a figure.
It is a time where the third dimension is all the rage, and developers are trying to find out what works and what doesn't. Will an exploration game work? Probably. Will a game whose character dual wields pistols work? Yeah, players like action. Will anyone buy a game fronted by a female character whose breast size was 'accidentally' set to 150%? I think they will, yes.
Save crystals at the ready, because we're about to go explore some underground mysteries...
Fun Times
We've been contacted by Jacqueline Natla to find and recover the Scion, an artefact that is supposedly still sitting in the lost tomb of Qualopec. Never one to turn down an adventurous archaeology expedition, Lara sets her sights on Peru to see what she can find - alone.
As iconic opening levels go, Tomb Raider is right up there with the Mario's and the Sonic's, even though the drab, washed out tones of a dark cave look nowhere near as inviting as the bright, family friendly levels found elsewhere.
The game is very much about exploring your surroundings, and its enforced by Lara's gymnastic backstory and even the thematic tutorial that takes place in her grand stately home. Built on a giant grid system, levels are broken down into an awful lot of boxes spaced out in an awful lot of configurations from each other.
While these can be well hidden amongst diagonals and slopes, it means that exploration in Tomb Raider can be approached somewhat logically because each type of jump Lara can do - modified or not by running or desperately reaching out to grab hold of a ledge - is going to have a set distance that it can cover. If there's somewhere you want to get to, but can't see a route there because of inaccessible jumps, then you're in the wrong place to start jumping, or are looking at the wrong place to go.
It can then be argued that levels in Tomb Raider can be boiled down to one giant puzzle, made up of smaller navigational puzzles, involving traversal in all three dimensions, a bit of combat to break things up, and some more obvious puzzle solving involving switches and keys and the like.
To say that, however, reduces the game to characterless maths when what we should be doing is shouting "Oohhhh! This is so cool! Look at this!" every few moments, because of the environment, or the wild animals that appear out of nowhere, or the moves Lara pulls off, from sideways jumps to 180 rolling in the middle of combat.
Does it look a bit silly? Yeah. Especially if you freeze it at the right moment. But is it useful? Hell yes, it's useful. It wasn't long ago that I was fumbling around in Resident Evil, which has the same control scheme, ish, as Tomb Raider. While it isn't fair to directly compare the two titles, as they each use tank controls in a different manner (pre-rendered, fixed camera scenes vs full 3D), it is still remarkable at how well the control scheme can be made to feel if the time is put into keeping it all consistent.
Lara still moves like characters probably shouldn't move, but within the context of the grid-based levels, she has a fluidity about her that stands out. You can get yourself caught in corners and walk into walls, and forgetting to hold the walk button before you fall off a ledge can be a right pain in the arse, but slow down just a little and the game feels amazing, and there are even inputs designed to show this off:
Why would you need to climb a ledge like that? It's not even physically possible, surely. It doesn't make level traversal faster, nor is it any safer than any other method of clambering about the place, and yet it absolutely screams that Lara is a strong and elegant character. You might argue the handstand is only there to show off her arse, wide hips, long slender legs and flexibility, but I would most certainly disagree. There is no better useless move in all of gaming than this handstand - so far as I can recall, at least.
Fond Memories
I don't know when or even why I got Tomb Raider, but I remember playing it often and never finishing it. Like today, I tended to get lost or frustrated with messing up jumps, so I didn't see an awful lot of the game until I used a Game Shark, I think it was, to skip levels and watch the cutscenes - some of which are rendered in CG, but others taking place within the game engine.
If you were to then ask me to sum up the plot, I couldn't. Natla is a bit of a backstabbing bitch, but then she and Lara weren't exactly friends to begin with. The mysteries of the ancient civilizations whose tombs I've raided are still a mystery to me - I don't know what the Scion does or did. I don't know who keeps leaving health kits and ammunition around the place, but I'm thankful...
I've played the opening to Tomb Raider so much that I know that missing this jump is costly because of a brown bear, wherever he is down there. I know that this door is on a timer and that I will fall off the ledge that the switch is on, rather than gracefully jump off it, because for some reason I always do.
I know that I have killed far too many wolves and bats and that no matter how simple the layout is underwater, I will panic and struggle to pull the levers in order to get air before dying, though on this particular run through, I actually died because I forgot about fall damage.
Sorry, Lara...
Frustrations
For all the good times there are though, there are still times when Tomb Raider gets all clunky. Enemy number one are save crystals, the only place at which you can save your progress, and failure to do so will mean restarting an entire level from scratch upon your silly mistake or costly combat manoeuvre.
Combat can feel a little funny in places too. Lara can jump out of harm's way with no real problems, providing there's space to do so, and her auto-aim, infinite ammo pistols can make short work of most things, but getting tangled too much will require the use of some medkits.
Textures, and environments in general, can be hit or miss. There are some varied levels to mix up colour schemes and the like, as the story has you going to Egypt and even Atlantis, but sometimes there are too many boxes, and other times a route through a level sticks out like a sore thumb. A wonderfully envisioned cavern area ending in a bleak corridor that leads to a decorated, mosaic-lined pool feels a little weird, but that's what we've got.
Final Word
As I've been writing this, I've been watching a playthrough out of the corner of my eye, and as the levels have progressed, it looks less and less like Tomb Raider, simply because those first few levels are so established in my memory.
It can look so good, and then look so dated. It can feel so smooth and yet so lumpy. It's an absolute must play, but it makes me want to dig out Tomb Raider: Anniversary, a remake that I did actually finish, in part because control schemes got easier and gamers got dumber, requiring easier games.
This isn't the last we've seen of Tomb Raider for the 1001 list, and the series is still going strong today, but it follows that 'yeah, but' nature that the first game gave off to me. For every great title, there's a duff one, and while the modern Tomb Raider looks top notch, it too can feel a little samey and uninspired when viewed next to its competitors.
But that's a problem that the Lara of 1996 doesn't have to concern herself with. She's just going to get her guns out, spring off the walls and shoot some animals in the face.
Oh, there he is.
Fun Facts
The Sega Saturn was the first console to see Tomb Raider. Then the bugs were fixed, it was released on the PlayStation, and Lara became an icon.
Tomb Raider, developed by Core Design, first released in 1996.
Version played: PlayStation, 1996, also via childhood memories and emulation.
Version watched: PlayStation, 1996 (Retro Gaming LongPlay)