Tomb Raider turns thirty with Lara Croft at 100 million copies sold

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Trailblazing, sexualized, legendary: Lara Croft and ‘Tomb Raider’ celebrate 30 years of adventure english.elpais.com

Thirty years after the first Tomb Raider went on sale, Lara Croft has sold 100 million games, fronted 2,300 magazine covers and toured some thirty countries, from the Colosseum to Kilimanjaro, Antarctica and Yucatán. El País marks the anniversary under a headline of three adjectives — trailblazing, sexualized, legendary — with two new games and a television series in production, timed to cement her status from 2027.

The origin is smaller than the myth. Toby Gard, who created the character, made her a woman so the game would not read as a straight Indiana Jones copy; his references were Tank Girl, Jamie Hewlett's punk comic heroine, and the singer Neneh Cherry. The first sketch was of Lara Cruz, a South American mercenary — Core Design wanted the character British, and the surname was taken from common entries in a phone book. The game took three years and a team of six in Derby, among them Heather Gibson, the only woman on the team, who designed the levels. What the six built pioneered the freely navigable three-dimensional environment.

The three decades since read less as design history than property history. The character has accumulated films, exhibitions, songs and the title of most versatile female digital character ever, surviving every owner, console generation, moral panic and film adaptation along the way. The rights have migrated through a chain of corporate parents and now sit with Sweden's Embracer, which bought the British gaming heritage wholesale from Square Enix.

The first game took six people three years to build. When Embracer signed for the catalogue in 2022, it paid a fraction of what Sony handed over for Bungie.