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Adds Schmitt: “I’ve seen and played a number of cool fan creations. One of my personal favorites was when someone re-did the original Caves level from the first Tomb Raider with the new editing tools, such as scripted cameras and different bad guys.”
Raiders of the Lost Games
If you haven’t played the original games and want to better understand the references in Chronicles (of course, you can play it without any prior knowledge of the series), you’ll also want to pick up Aspyr’s upcoming Tomb Raider: The Trilogy, which contains over 50 levels of Croftian fun spread across gold versions of the first three games, The Gold Mask (never released on CD), and The Lost Artifact (first time on the Mac).
There are over 100 hours of gameplay in this one, which will definitely make you a Tomb Raider master.
And if you’re already taking advantage of the enhanced performance that Mac OS X brings to your computer, you’ll be glad to know that Chronicles is Carbonized to play on the only OS which is as tough and pretty as Lara herself. (The level editor and the Trilogy collection will run in Mac OS X’s Classic environment)
“We plan to fully support Mac OS X in all our future games,” says Rogers.
A sneak peak at some early art from the
next generation of Tomb Raider.
next generation of Tomb Raider.
Never Go Without Lara
So what will the future bring to the Lara Croft legacy? Not only will you be able to thrill to her big screen adventures this summer in the Tomb Raider movie (see the sidebar for more information), but Eidos is hard at work on the aforementioned “next generation of Tomb Raider games,” and you can bet they’ll be coming to the Mac too.
“Aspyr is committed to continuing our partnership with Eidos to bring future Lara Croft titles to the Mac,” says Rogers. “We’re doing everything we can to ensure that no Mac owner will ever have to go without Lara.”
Lara Croft: the see-through revelation.
“When the first Tomb Raider game was introduced in the fall of 1996,” says Schmitt, “it was a fresh new experience with an exciting character who attracted a lot of fans.” That original game introduced the videogame world to Lara Croft, whom many have called “a female Indiana Jones” during the past five years. Like her male counterpart, she has an affinity for traveling the globe and searching for lost artifacts (with plenty of admiration from members of the opposite sex), although she’s not a professor. She’s the daughter of the British aristocrat Lord Henshingly Croft, and she was raised in a world where she was expected to marry a wealthy man, bear children, and take care of their home. When she was 21, though, she became the sole survivor of a plane that crashed deep in the Himalayas and her life changed forever. She survived for two weeks on the strength of her wits and determination, and when she returned home she realized that she couldn’t accept her father’s demands and live what she thought would be a boring life. Unwilling to follow Lord Croft’s wishes and subsequently disowned by her family, she funded her trips around the globe to search for ancient treasures by writing about her findings in archeological journals. |
The original Tomb Raider game was followed by Tomb Raider II and III — which took her to China, India and Antarctica, among other exotic locales — before the events at the end of Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation left her for dead. Each new game has expanded the Tomb Raider cast of supporting characters. Simon West, the director of the Tomb Raider movie, which stars Angelina Jolie as Lara Croft, also worked on the screenplay. He says he was attracted to the project because “Lara Croft is an unusual female character who’s both sexy and savvy. Above all, though, she’s intelligent, and she uses her brains, not just her guns, to get her out of trouble.” According to West, the production of the film involved the use of many Macs, which were used for everything from working on the screenplay to creating the amazing special effects. |
The Tomb Raider series has also spawned a monthly comic book from publisher Top Cow, strategy guides to help you through the tricky parts of the games (visit Aspyr for more information), and several books that tie in with the film, including the ever-popular novelization and technical guide. Schmitt still marvels at the success of Tomb Raider. “I knew it was a great game when I saw the first demo way back when,” he says, “but I never anticipated four sequels and a major motion picture.” |
Minimum System Requirements:  Open GL 3D Hardware Acceleration Required (Rage Pro, Rage 128 or better) Power G3 266 MHz or faster (350 MHz recommended) Mac OS 8.6 or higher (including Mac OS X) 32 MB RAM (64 MB recommended) 4x CD-ROMAdditional Requirements for the level editor: At least 300MB of hard disc space
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