Lara Croft

Lara Croft is a character from the Tomb Raider videogame series. She might be the most famous woman in the history of video games. It’s down to either Ms. Croft or Ms. Pac-Man, and Lara has to take that one in the personality department, if nothing else.

In the fictional world She’s explored throughout the Tomb Raider series, Lara Croft is a daughter of the English aristocracy. When She was nine years old, she and her mother were the only initial survivors of a plane crash in the Himalayan mountains. Only Lara made it down out of the mountains, however – her mother disappeared under mysterious circumstances, an event that helped drive Lara towards a career as a globe-trotting explorer.

Toby Gard, the Core Design artist who designed Lara Croft for the original Tomb Raider, has often remarked that he never intended for her sex appeal to be her main selling point. Originally, She was intended to be a relatively realistic, down-to-earth character Design – a practical woman in a practical outfit with an eminently practical pair of guns on her hips. Nevertheless, her looks helped make her an icon, and as 3D graphics technology has gradually become more refined, her proportions have become a bit more believable in recent years.

Coming into her own at the same time as the PlayStation itself, Lara Croft was one of the first characters of the 32-bit age to break through as a mainstream star. She appeared in the giant multimedia stage show of U2’s 1997 PopMart world tour, and Angelina Jolie played her in two successful movie outings.

2003’s Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness took Lara Croft in something of a mis-conceived direction – She disappeared and came back as a burned-out fugitive
wanted for murder. Since then, however, in the hands of developer Crystal Dynamics, she’s gotten back to her roots as an Indiana Jones-style adventurer.

Lara Croft