The latest issue of Retro Gamer doubles down with a fantastic pair of Lara Croft features. A Tribute To Core Design looks at many of the developer’s greatest games, including Rick Dangerous and Thunderhawk with co-founder Jeremy Heath-Smith having particularly fond words for the original Tomb Raider. “The way we had the 3D engine, the graphics and level design had never been done before, so people were blown away by that,” he tells us. “Secondly, there was this female character bouncing around the screen, shooting dinosaurs and tigers, and everything she shouldn’t have been shooting! That was a recipe for success. It was never going to fail, looking back at it now.”
He continues to voice his thoughts on numerous other games in Core’s catalogue, including Chuck Rock “Chris Long was the game’s creator. I think he was modelling Chuck Rock on me, with the big belly, wandering around looking vague!”, Jaguar XJ220, “I managed to secure the licence from Jaguar. We then put competing cars in there: Ferraris and whatever. But we didn’t licence them. Those were the good old days – it was the Wild West!” and Tomb Raider 2, saying, “People wanted the series to evolve, but they didn’t realise how little time we had.”
