Tomb Raider: Lara Croft creators on birthing an icon as franchise turns 25

In this exclusive excerpt from the book - which you can pre-order now at Amazon, Waterstones or Pen & Sword Books - Baxter pulls together an oral history of Lara's creation from the people that made it happen.

Everyone at CORE was in awe at this tech demo. In previous years it was cartoony platformers and soul-searching spaceships with galactic music, here it was a 3D landscape where you could fight against a Tyrannosaurus Rex. However, the Lara Croft we know today was not originally named Lara Croft. Susie Hamilton, who handled PR for CORE Design at the time, reveals some interesting facts about her genesis:

"Tomb Raider was first unveiled to us in an offsite meeting—the company was looking for inspiration for a new character/concept and this was a chance for the various teams to reveal what they had been working on. I definitely remember [character designer] Toby Gard speaking to us about a female version of Indiana Jones and unveiling his first sketches of Lara Croft. At that point she was called Lara Cruz. I think we were all very intrigued and so the team continued with the development."

Troy Horton, producer of the first Tomb Raider game, offered further remarks on Lara Croft’s origins:

"I don’t remember when I first came onto the project but I do recall Adrian Heath-Smith [the brother of Jeremy Heath-Smith, founder of CORE Design] who was a producer on the project, being in his office and showing me a wireframe animation of a woman swinging on a rope from one ledge to another. He shared this office with someone else; might have been our accounts manager, Helen. I recall that was the first time I heard of it and it was a wireframe animation. I think it was done on an Amiga, like in ‘Deep Paint Animator’ or something like that. So I think it might have been an idea that Toby was potentially thinking about for quite a long time before actual real development started."

A buzz had started to form within CORE. While there were groups who were working on games for the SEGA Mega Drive, the Amiga, and the SEGA Mega CD, the pitch that programmer Paul Douglas and designer Toby Gard had made was shown across the whole company. Many at the company wondered just how a game like this could be created on time and within budget. Others involved in the early stages of the game’s development recall just how excited they were to be part of it, and how eager they were to get on board as part of the original development team, as Peter Barnard, Heather Gibson and Simon Phipps recall.

Peter Barnard, who created Full Motion Video (FMV) scenes for the game, says: "I remember seeing Jeremy [Heath-Smith] for the first time in a meeting, as he was in LA when I started, and in this company wide meeting in 1995, I remember him saying ‘Every game is going to have an FMV intro’, and he name-checked me as an example of who will be making these for games going forward.

"Some of us highlighted some games that didn’t have them, like DOOM, but Jeremy was so convinced by what he had seen back at LA with the original PlayStation, it was a given for the next project, which would be TR. Looking back at games of the time, games like Tekken or Wipeout would have a CG intro, so it was just normal, it was what those games did, it was the new technology, so the emphasis on one for TR was set.

"And it worked for Toby, as he had this idea for a cinematic quality for the game, and he wanted to tell this big story. Whenever I talk to students, when you create a character, you have to build a world around them, and that’s what he did. It wasn’t big boobs - it was the outfit, it was the attitude, it was the backstory and the whole world that created the success of TR. It gave context to the world she lived in, and that’s what I tell students now, all because of that meeting."

Heather Gibson, level designer, adds: "I didn’t know what game to work on next. I thought ‘I better get on a team soon, otherwise it’s goodbye.’ So I thought if anyone wanted help I’d just reach out. The way things worked at CORE, you were allowed to work on your own game ideas.

"Toby had been trying to sell this game to Jeremy, since he arrived at CORE really. His concept for TR was a bit out there, and he wanted to do a 3D game, and by then they hadn’t really been done before.

"So I remember sitting in with Toby and looking at his very early stuff and I was pretty blown away. We were recently given 3DS Max, so suddenly we were given the power to create 3D levels and FMV, and Toby took it one step closer to how TR was in his demonstration, by creating an Egyptian tomb.

"Just sitting at a table and talking about it didn’t work, so Toby put together this very atmospheric Tomb. No enemies but just as a guide as to how this game would go. So I’m sitting next to Toby and I’m trying to replicate this in how a player could actually wander through."

Artist Simon Phipps, who created Rick Dangerous for CORE Design, recalls: "I didn’t work on Tomb Raider, but I remember Toby being a really talented, driven young guy who had stacks of energy and a real vision. The one contribution I did have to Tomb Raider & the design of Lara was in one of those early meetings when Toby presented a piece of art that depicted the character who would become Lara looking like a 1950’s pith-helmeted pin-up heroine that didn’t look much like she raided tombs.

"I suggested Toby take a look at Tank Girl, so I lent him my comics to give him a hand. If you look closely, version 1 of Lara is very heavily Tank Girl inspired, with the single strand of hair dangling over her forehead coming from Belle in Disney’s Beauty & the Beast, as that was in cinemas around that time, if I remember correctly.

"I don’t remember much of the project to be honest - that was all handled downstairs in another room - the guys were building their own tools, Toby was drawing amazing storyboards and animating proto-Lara in 3DS. I was upstairs on another project on the far side of the building. I got out in September-ish of 1994, just when the pitch had been accepted."

The Making of Tomb Raider by Daryl Baxter is published on 30th October 2021 by Pen & Sword Books. Pre-orders are also available at Amazon and Waterstones.

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