#Lara croft tomb raider game costume manual

… But the marketing guys totally brushed him off,' Rummery recalls. 'That's the way he wanted to market the games: classic, like a movie. 'There was always a disconnect between the marketing and the games,' Rummery says, confirming that Gard was 'riled up' by the way Eidos promoted Croft as a cyber-bimbo. But Gard departed Core before work began on Tomb Raider II, largely upset by the way his creation had been yanked out of his control. She landed partially nude on the covers of magazines, appeared in commercials for soft drinks, and even went on tour with U2. Croft's international appeal broadened even further. Rummery says Eidos was keen on producing Tomb Raider II on a tight turnaround of eight months - a grueling schedule for the overworked staff, though they met their holiday deadline and were paid handsomely in royalties. I was like, 'How the f- should I know?''Īs Croft's profile ballooned, so did Core's workload. It was infinitely strange working on Tomb Raider II because, of course, we had people suddenly asking us all these questions as though she was a friend of ours, like who did she date. … But we hadn't really thought of anything beyond that.

#Lara croft tomb raider game costume manual

She had a very brief history that appeared in the cover manual that came with the game, which was short and explained how she'd gone from being an aristocratic young lady, but later rebelled and discovered herself after surviving a plane crash during a ski trip, which explained why she was a loner. We were actually backfilling a story for her. She's not that kind of girl.' He adds that none of the Core team members had any idea Croft would become a mainstream celebrity, nor did they intend to make her one: 'It's absolutely true. 'That's just not the character in the games. 'I think it was one of the things that riled up Toby and all of us, when the marketing got ahold of her and used her as a glamor model,' Rummery says. Gard intended to sell Tomb Raider as a revolutionary game, while Eidos saw its star as a head-turning cash cow who'd hawk the title for them.

That drove a wedge between the developers and their distributor. 'It was a bit like showing up at a car manufacturer wondering what you're going to work on, and them being like, 'Oh, you're going to work on hovercars.'' Tomb Raider's unique gameplay elements (it was one of the first 3-D actioners of its size and scope), unconventional lead character, and cinematic aesthetic made it one of the best-selling games of all time.Īctress Rhona Mitra got her big break as a Lara Croft model in the late '90s, when publisher Eidos sought to market the character as a sexy pinup, as opposed to the capable action-explorer seen in the games. 'Honestly, I sat there thinking, 'Oh my God, this is insane,'' developer Gavin Rummery tells EW. Gard, along with a small team of developers, crafted the first Tomb Raider game in a converted Victorian house in the English city of Derby. She was a slick, witty, dastardly British heiress who saved the world not with superheroic powers, but rather physical prowess and brainy gumption. As Sony's PlayStation poised itself to disrupt the gaming market with its advanced 3-D capabilities, so did Croft. Initially conceived as a man, Lara Croft ultimately sprang from the mind of Core Design animator Toby Gard in response to the male-dominated arena of action-adventure games.