Lara Croft: Tomb Raider - The Action Adventure - Lara's interactive DVD spin off
1I hope you are all healthy & safe wherever you are in the World right now and whatever challenges you are facing.
Time Stamps:
Overview: 00:00
Loading: 00:29
Tutorial: 01:06
Mission 1 (includes selecting options, intro etc): 02:42
Mission 2: 11:22
Mission 3: 15:26
Mission 4: 17:16
After launching on the Sega Saturn then making the PlayStation her spiritual home and a run of 5 main releases for the console & PC market it was time for Core Design to move Lara onto Sony's new powerhouse - the PS2.
An ambitious design followed in an attempt to breathe new life into the formula with many more elements to the gameplay. This design became bloated, trying to cram too much in with difficult to develop for hardware leading the game to languish in development for 3 years. Eventually Angel of Darkness hit the PS2 to mediocre review scores but reasonable sales. Eidos had seen enough and took the IP from Core Design & requested Crystal Dynamics to reboot the franchise - which they successfully did with Tomb Raider: Legend.
In the mid 2000's DVD was growing in popularity - helped no doubt by the popularity of the PS2. This led to a number of Interactive DVD's to be created & released to capitalise on this new technology & to try to capture the lucrative casual gamer market. After adorning countless magazine covers, U2 pop videos & Lucozade adverts it was an obvious move for Lara Croft to star in her own interactive DVD game. As the box proudly proclaims - this is Lara for Everyone - as long as you had a DVD player!
This takes the graphics of Angel of Darkness (as well as simplifying it's storyline) to present a playable adventure. Obviously the "gameplay" is limited but they stretch it as far as they can with various options at key points - think "Choose your own adventure" interspersed with mini games such as pressing a sequence of buttons on your remote before the timer runs down, button mashing, remembering a sequence of button prompts, a basic inventory system & even a simple shooting gallery. On top of this it features bonus points to discover, multiplayer for 2 teams & a pass-word system to let you come back where you left of. It is pretty much all you can do with the format but in fairness works well. Little Worlds Studios & Bright Entertainment put some effort into this as it clearly wasn't just a quick rush-job - they really tried to emulate the console game as closely as they could given the constraints of the technology. I guess if this had been successful then perhaps other titles would have followed e.g. Tomb Raider Legend The DVD Game etc
It is a curio these days but you could create something like this in all sorts of different software these days using links or branching paths etc (or even in YouTube I guess.....hmmm that gives me an idea.
This came out in 2006 & I remember seeing it in shops priced around £12.99. I ended up grabbing a copy on clearance in maybe 2009 or 2010 as a curio. I had credit leftover from trading games in at a shop & they had these at the counter marked up at 99pence so to use the final £1 of credit I grabbed it. Just rediscovered it in my loft.
I let the Tutorial run showing the "gameplay" then play through the first 4 missions. Hopefully it gives you a feel for the game.
If you want to see more let me know & I'll perhaps capture the rest.
This is "played" on my Toshiba HD EP-30 which is a HD-DVD player. It was a struggle to capture but hopefully I got there in the end. Perhaps one day someone will convert this to run on a Saturn with a VCD Card giving the system a sequel to the original version :-)
Let me know what you think.
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Stay strong, stay safe & stay healthy - Grey Fox