Tomb Raider: Anniversary
"Tomb Raider" is the first game in the titular franchise, and introduced the series' gameplay standards and its protagonist Lara Croft. Developed by British studio Core Design, "Tomb Raider" was a commercial and critical success, and was followed by five successive games between 1996 and 2000. Their sixth "Tomb Raider" game "" was beset by developmental problems and rushed to release, resulting in low sales and mixed critical reception. The game's failure and Core Design's fatigue with the series prompted franchise publisher Eidos Interactive to move development of "Tomb Raider" to the American studio Crystal Dynamics, who rebooted the franchise with "". "Legend" released in 2006 to critical and commercial success.
Tomb Raider
The original "Tomb Raider" theme was composed by Nathan McCree. He created the original theme music after having discussions with Gard about the character of Lara Croft. Having decided to use Classical English music as an inspiration, he decided to create something simple for the theme song. Its simplicity made rearrangements and orchestrations easy. For his work on the first three "Tomb Raider" games, he was given fairly minimal briefs, and for "Tomb Raider III" he was working on the game as a freelancer as he had left the company. For "The Last Revelation", Peter Connelly replaced Nathan McCree as the main composer, using McCree's music as a basis for his work. He composed the opening theme for "The Last Revelation", saying that the opening melody came to him out of the blue, and added Egyptian motifs to fit in with the game's setting. "Chronicles" was originally going to have a sizeable original opening theme, but due to time constraints the majority of it ended up being discarded, much to Connelly's later regret. Only the opening segment survived. The music for "Angel of Darkness", composed by Connelly and Martin Iveson, was the one element of production that did not encounter problems, as recording was finished before the major content cuts happened. Scored using a full orchestra as opposed to the synthesised instruments of previous titles, it was performed by the London Symphony Orchestra.