Welcome to my Tomb Raider Shrine



What is Tomb Raider?

Tomb Raider is an action-adventure video game series created in 1996 by British video game developer Core Design and currently developed by Crystal Dynamics. The series follows the exploits of British archeologist and adventurer Lara Croft as she travels the world venturing into ancient tombs and ruins in search of lost artifacts. During the last 25 years, the series has evolved into a multimedia franchise, being adapted into movies, comic books and novels.



My experience

How I met Lara Croft

I've been a fan of Tomb Raider and Lara Croft for as long as I remember. My first experience with Tomb Raider was watching the son of the owner of the daycare I used to go to play Tomb Raider IV on his personal computer and 2yo me being unable to take my eyes off the screen. I also remember my uncles playing Tomb Raider II on their old PlayStation, I remember my brother showing me an article of a new TR game from a gaming magazine, and I remember playing a ripped (no ost, no cutscenes) version of Tomb Raider II from a bootleg game compilation on my family's computer (and being too scared to play the actual main levels, resorting to replaying the tutorial stage over and over again). Lara Croft was everywhere and she was everything to me. I can't really remember what about her was so appealing to me but I know that I was just fascinated with her, I used to think she was the coolest thing in the world and I wanted to be like her.

Being a little kid from a South American country with limited access to the internet, however, my knowledge *about* Tomb Raider was just as limited; I didn't really know who Lara Croft was, what her job was or what was happening in the games I witnessed adults play. I couldn't play the games myself either as even bootleg copies were very rare in flea markets, and digital downloads weren't an option. Even if I were to get my hands on a Tomb Raider game, there wasn't much of a plot I could grasp since South American countries would only get untranslated American versions of the games (spanish translations were a privilege reserved for the european versions only). Although I already knew I liked it, I couldn't really indulge much in Tomb Raider, Lara Croft was still but an icon for me, the idea of a character.

My first Tomb Raider game

It was in 2006 that I *actually* played a Tomb Raider game for the first time, Tomb Raider Legend had just come out and my older brother had received a bootleg copy of the PAL version of the game. I recall being very confused seeing this new Lara Croft for the first time as she looked pretty different from the character of the games I knew, but as soon as I saw her in action I knew it was her, wielding her signature dual pistols, jumping, climbing and killing bad guys. There was something else about this game that was also different: it had langauge settings and a spanish translation. Now that I could play Tomb Raider in spanish for the first time I was finally able to understand the game's plot and dialogue; Lara was speaking my language and now not only she looked cool, but she also had a cool personality, she was fun and charming, and I loved her.

I immediately fell in love with Tomb Raider Legend, I was fascinated with the game's plot, gameplay, beautiful locations and fun collectibles, I would patiently wait all week until the weekend and just play for hours (consoles and computer time were strictly limited during school days). For Christmas that year my parents got me an original copy of the game for the PS2 and I remember spending my whole summer vacation playing TRL trying to get 100% completion. I loved this game so much that I would try to talk to everyone about it, which would often end with people (family and peers) telling me to stop obsessing over it.

My first fandom

After finishing Legend, I decided to expand my Tomb Raider knowledge by trying to play the rest of the games, which led me to a tutorial hosted on a TR fansite on how to play Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness for free by installing official patches on a trial version of the game. Still being a clueless kid with average 10yo computer skills I saw myself being forced to ask for technical support on the fansite's official forum: Tomb Raider Saga, a spanish Tomb Raider forum. Visiting the forums quickly became a regular activity for me, as soon as I got back home from school I would log in and read thread after thread about other fans' opinions and theories about the series. It was on this forum that I first learned the concept of fanart, and being inspired by it, I would start experimenting with graphic design by doing Tomb Raider edits with Photoshop 7 (a pirated version, of course). The Tomb Raider fandom was my first online community, and after being isolated and ridiculed for being too passionate about my interests, I had finally found people who shared the same interests as me.

During the next few years I would be an active member in the community, engaging in discussions about the series' future and sharing my own fan creations with my fellow forum members. The TRSaga forums would close circa 2011 after the anouncement of a Tomb Raider reboot led to a fight between some members and the admin. After the forum's shutdown, some members tried to revive the community by creating their own forums and websites, but none of them felt the same to me. After all these years, I still am a Tomb Raider fan and I still get excited about Tomb Raider-related announcements. Sadly, the fandom itself is pretty divided right now as "classic" and "reboot" fans are on constant war against each other on social media, so there's not much of a community to be part of nowadays. I, for one, love all versions of Lara Croft and I'm always happy to interact with other fans who share the same feeling.

Why Tomb Raider is important to me

Tomb Raider has been an essential part of my life since forever and It's always been present in some way or another. It's something that brings me joy and comfort and it makes me happy to just talk about it. I think Tomb Raider has connected me to a lot of important things; it drove me to my first online community, it sparked my interest for graphic design and it was my introduction to video games. Lara Croft herself has been a huge inspiration in my life, looking up to her helped me feel empowered in my femininity as a queer kid and taught me that I didn't need to shape myself after male role models to feel strong. Despite how the franchise might change in the future, Tomb Raider will always be important to me and I will always have love for it in my heart, and I'm excited for what's to come and to see how Lara Croft will continue to inspire people for another 25 years.



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