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 III
Actual development on "Tomb Raider III" began in December 1997. At the time, lead programmer Martin Gibbins, who previously worked on the 1996 title "Blam! Machinehead", was tweaking the old "Tomb Raider" engine to build a new game with a stronger emphasis on action and shooting. The new team considered Gibbins' additional work to the engine valuable and decided to use it as a basis for the 1998 "Tomb Raider" game, which was originally intended to be a spin-off called "The Further Adventures of Lara Croft". However, as development progressed and more ideas were introduced, the company considered the number of changes enough to justify a complete sequel. The PlayStation served as the lead platform for the game, while the Microsoft Windows release is simply a conversion with slightly improved visuals. As a result, everything was built around the capabilities of the PlayStation hardware, with 16-bit palettes and high-resolution graphics, as opposed to the 8-bit palettes and "pseudo medium" resolution of the earlier titles, Core Design CEO Jeremy Smith explained.