Skip to main content

Toby Gard, inventor of Lara Croft/Tomb Raider

News: "The story goes that Frances Gard, Toby's younger sister, was the inspiration for Lara Croft. You'll know Lara Croft better as Tomb Raider, the computer-game character who kicks, jumps and swims her way through a maze of tunnels fit to bamboozle the Minotaur. Latterly, she's done the same in the cinema, in two films: Lara Croft: Tomb Raider and Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life. Toby invented Lara Croft/Tomb Raider in the mid-1990s while he was working at Core Design, a company that develops video software. He designed, programmed and executed the game using techniques which, at the time, were revolutionary. It was an immediate critical and commercial success. Core has sold in excess of 25 million units under the Tomb Raider name.

But Lara Croft became an emblem beyond the insular video-gaming world. She appeared on stage with U2 during their Pop Mart world tour. She became the subject of highbrow-goes-lowbrow cultural essays. She featured on the covers of style magazines. And she was 'the face' of Lucozade. She even released a pop single, produced by the dreaded Dave Stewart. The biggest video-game icon since Pac-Man, Croft has netted Core Design in excess of �400m. But Gard has seen none of it. He quit Core two months after the game was released. It was 1997. It was the first game he'd developed. He was 24 years old."

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

New York Post Online Edition

news : "December 29, 2003 -- WASHINGTON - Startling new Army statistics show that strife-torn Baghdad - considered the most dangerous city in the world - now has a lower murder rate than New York. The newest numbers, released by the Army's 1st Infantry Division, reveal that over the past three months, murders and other crimes in Baghdad are decreasing dramatically and that in the month of October, there were fewer murders per capita there than the Big Apple, Chicago, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. The Bush administration and outside experts are touting these new figures as a sign that, eight months after the fall of Saddam Hussein, major progress is starting to be made in the oft-criticized effort by the United States and coalition partners to restore order and rebuild Iraq. 'If these numbers are accurate, they show that the systems we put in place four months ago to develop a police force based on the principles of a free and democratic society are starting to ...
Forum: The fish that threatened national security : "At La Guardia we proceeded to security and the X-ray inspection point run by the Transportation Security Administration. I have learned by now that, post-9/11, a traveler is better off safe than sorry when proceeding through security. I wasn't prepared, however, for the TSA to stop me right at the entrance, proclaiming that no small pets, including fish, were permitted through security. I had, however, just received the blessing of the ticket agents at US Airways and pre-assured MJ's travels with Pittsburgh International Airport security weeks before our travel date. I tried to explain this to the screener who stood between me and the gates, but she would have none of it. I was led back to the US Airways ticket counter, stocking-footed and alone, where the agents reasserted that they did not see a problem for me to have a fish on board, properly packaged in plastic fish bag and secured with a rubber band as MJ was....