Through out the development of Tomb Raider Core had made a series of extremely high quality images featuring Lara croft (a select few now own copies of these extremely rare high-res images).  They were used to create the front cover to the game.  The design for the cover was an important job.  It has to be aesthetic and say what the game is about in order to sell. 

Before the release of Tomb Raider in 1996, a marketing decision was made to add 3 more words to the game's title: Starring Lara Croft.  "I don't know who this was, I'm sure there's about fifteen that want to take credit for it, but someone said we should call the game Tomb Raider : Starring Lara Croft.  I thought, why would anyone want to call it that?  They thought it made it sound bigger and more movie-like.  They forced us into doing it, which is the best thing that could have ever happened.  I think that by creating that 'Starring Lara Croft' you suddenly create a new way of naming videogames.  You can't say it was Eidos that did that, it just happened." said Jeremy. 

"We knew two days after the first game was released that we had a mega hit on our hands, because everything went mad, the World went crazy.  Even today I'm still learning of the scale of it."

The box art design for Tomb Raider went through several different stages before they decided on the final one that hit our shelves.  There was even a Pyramid shaped box version of the game!

As the series progressed...

Core Design had hit it big time.  Tomb Raider was one of the best selling games ever.  The second game in the series "Tomb Raider : The Dagger of Xian" is still today the most successful of the series.  Core Design went on to make 5 more Tomb Raider games after their first smash hit back in 1996.  In 2004 Core Design lost the Tomb Raider franchise to American developers Crystal Dynamics.  In 2006 Crystal Dynamics released their first Tomb Raider game aimed at re-kindling the series, its name: "Tomb Raider Legend".    

How has Lara changed over the years?

Well, despite receiving a few more polygons here and there Lara hadn't really changed an awful lot, that was until 2003.  In 2003 Core design took Lara down a new route focusing on her darker side in their sixth and final title "Tomb Raider : The Angel of Darkness".  The Lara model went from 500 polygons to a staggering 5,000 polygons, this gave Lara a much more realistic appearance.  However some fans didn't like this new dark streak to their hero.