Core Design Limited

The company is widely known for the Tomb Raider series, created by Toby Gard and Paul Howard Douglas, which was released in 1996 and followed by several sequels. The success of Tomb Raider and its subsequent sequels played a huge part in keeping Eidos Interactive financially solvent.

After the release of the original Tomb Raider, which had debuted on the Sega Saturn platform ahead of the PlayStation version (they had been developed simultaneously) Sony Computer Entertainment recognised the game's popularity and the potential mass appeal of future Tomb Raider titles. SCE offered Core Design and Eidos Interactive an exclusivity agreement, to ensure that the first sequel would not be developed for either the Saturn or the Nintendo 64. The full terms of this offer have never been revealed. By making the PlayStation the only console with Tomb Raider II, Sony Computer Entertainment was able to benefit by attracting new PlayStation owners leveraging Tomb Raider as a killer application and using Lara Croft as a marketing character alongside Sony's own first party characters. Core Design also had the advantage of developing only for a single console, rather than several at once. This exclusivity agreement was further extended to cover the third game in the series. The fourth and fifth games in the franchise, Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation and Tomb Raider Chronicles respectively, were also released for the Sega Dreamcast.

I joined 'Core Design' in 1997. My first Game for Core was 'Fighting Force 2' for the Sony Play Station, working as a 'Environment Artist and Level Builder using the fighting force engine developed by Neil Topham.

Having completed FF2. The team went on to develop 'Race Nation', a cross between 'GTI Club' and 'Ridge Racer'. In a year the team managed to get a working demo for the game. However Eidos decided that there was too much competition in that genre and the game was canned.

We were then were pulled into the 'Tomb Raider - Angel of Darkness' game. As a team we were tasked to develop the Paris Louvre and Prague levels of the game. As a 'Senior Environment Artist' my level was to work on the main Louvre Gallery. In the prague level along wit Jerry Oldrieve we worked on the 'Prague Square'. I also worked on the 'Prague Hanger' section.