This is the original Tomb Raider, the Core Design run that introduced Lara Croft and helped make 3D exploration a genre of its own. The 1996 first game sent the British archaeologist into vast, lonely tombs full of jumping puzzles, switches, and the occasional lethal animal, with a sense of isolation and scale that felt genuinely new at the time.
Core Design then shipped a new entry almost every year, a relentless pace that shows in the back half of this run. Tomb Raider II and III broadened the formula, but by The Angel of Darkness (2003) the strain was obvious, and that troubled game effectively ended the studio's tenure before the series was handed elsewhere. It is a games-only era, and a foundational one: clumsy tank controls and all, these are the games that built one of gaming's most recognizable icons.
The The Core Design Era franchise spans 6 games in the CrossBinge catalog.
Part of Tomb Raider.