Aspyr has confirmed it has restored posters that were "inadvertently" removed from Tomb Raider 1-3 Remastered in its last patch.

Despite them being flagged by the official Tomb Raider website as a detail to go find, a set of Lara Croft pin-up style posters were mysteriously pulled from the game's Remastered graphical mode recently with no warning.

Aspyr now says this removal was "inadverent" and happened when the team was making "several texture and graphical updates to the HD version".

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UPDATE 1/3/24: Aspyr has seen all the Tomb Raider 1-3 Remastered chatter about the differences between the Epic Games Store version and other versions of the game. And, well, it has left me a tad confused.

Apparently, the Epic Games Store version was a "development build with incomplete assets", despite it looking better than other versions.

"Content in that Epic Games Store build contained some work-in-progress materials that do not represent our final quality expectations. We have corrected the build to match the live Steam version," the developer wrote on Steam.

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The creators of Tomb Raider I-III Remastered have apologised to players for releasing an unfinished version of the game on the Epic Games Store, following a series of unflattering comparisons between versions on ye olde social media.

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UPDATE 4.45pm UK: Consider me educated. I have looked into this further, and it turns out not only is Trinity the name of the military order in the rebooted Tomb Raider games, but it is also the code name for the first detonation of a nuclear weapon, which was conducted by the United States Army back in 1945. And that could be what the Tomb Raider website is referring to. Whoops!

So, yes, the mention of Trinity on the Tomb Raider site may well be a coincidence that left the super fan in me a little too enthusiastic. Reader, I confess, I may have jumped the gun a bit here. I am going to send a message to the Tomb Raider team though and ask if they have any comment on the wording in the blog post, because my curiosity has now been piqued even more.

The original story continues below.

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A Tomb Raider fan and modder has revealed that they put their own personal projects on hold for a very good reason: they have actually been leading the development of Tomb Raider 1-3 Remastered.

XProger is the brains behind OpenLara, an open-source cross-platform engine of the classic Tomb Raider series. However, this project and others are now on hold, as XProger was scooped up by Aspyr's parent company Saber Interactive to work on its official Tomb Raider project.

"For the past year I've been busy with a dream project that has become the culmination of the last eight years of my life - Tomb Raider 1-3 Remastered," XProger shared on X, thanking Saber for "trusting me to lead the project and assemble a dream team of true fans".

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Hello! Welcome back to our regular feature where we write a little bit about some of the games we've been playing over the past few days. This week: tombs, maps, and bats.

If you fancy catching up on some of the older editions of What We've Been Playing, here's our archive.

Nothing says Valentine's Day like launching someone you dearly love off of the side of a cliff, which is exactly what I did. Before you get all concerned, my husband is fine; I am of course talking about the one and only Lara Croft.

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UPDATE 4.45pm UK: Consider me educated. I have looked into this further, and it turns out not only is Trinity the name of the military order in the rebooted Tomb Raider games, but it is also the code name for the first detonation of a nuclear weapon, which was conducted by the United States Army back in 1945. And that could be what the Tomb Raider website is referring to. Whoops!

So, yes, the mention of Trinity on the Tomb Raider site may well be a coincidence that left the super fan in me a little too enthusiastic. Reader, I confess, I may have jumped the gun a bit here. I am going to send a message to the Tomb Raider team though and ask if they have any comment on the wording in the blog post, because my curiosity has now been piqued even more.

The original story continues below.

Read more

A Tomb Raider fan and modder has revealed that they put their own personal projects on hold for a very good reason: they have actually been leading the development of Tomb Raider 1-3 Remastered.

XProger is the brains behind OpenLara, an open-source cross-platform engine of the classic Tomb Raider series. However, this project and others are now on hold, as XProger was scooped up by Aspyr's parent company Saber Interactive to work on its official Tomb Raider project.

"For the past year I've been busy with a dream project that has become the culmination of the last eight years of my life - Tomb Raider 1-3 Remastered," XProger shared on X, thanking Saber for "trusting me to lead the project and assemble a dream team of true fans".

Read more

Hello! Welcome back to our regular feature where we write a little bit about some of the games we've been playing over the past few days. This week: tombs, maps, and bats.

If you fancy catching up on some of the older editions of What We've Been Playing, here's our archive.

Nothing says Valentine's Day like launching someone you dearly love off of the side of a cliff, which is exactly what I did. Before you get all concerned, my husband is fine; I am of course talking about the one and only Lara Croft.

Read more

There was a time when Tomb Raider stood as one of the most recognisable game series in the world, but decades later the original entries are largely unknown to those that didn't grow up with them. That's where Tomb Raider 1-3 Remastered comes into play, a collection of brand-new versions of the first three titles with enhanced lighting, improved detail, high-res textures and better performance. Remastered feels both fresh and retro at the same time - and I've been playing it over the last week to determine how it stacks up against the original games in terms of visuals, controls and more.

Back in 2016, I created an episode of DF Retro covering the original Tomb Raider where I compared the PlayStation, Saturn and PC versions while showcasing some of the underlying technology in action, such as Sega Saturn's unique sprite-driven 3D rendering. Since that video, the Tomb Raider scene has continued to thrive with the release of the open-source Tomb Raider engine OpenLara, not only showcasing impressive new visual feature features but also enabling the community to go wild with porting. There now exists, for instance, versions of Tomb Raider that can run on classic consoles like the Sega 32x, 3DO and Game Boy Advance.

The rebooted series itself has also gone on a hiatus of sorts, disappearing following the release of Shadow of the Tomb Raider as we await a new installment. In the here and now though, we have this brand-new re-release of the first three games thanks to Aspyr and, save for a few minor issues here and there, my experience has been excellent.

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Games can be beautiful because they are timeless, but they can also be beautiful because they are timely. When it comes to timelessness, you're going to struggle to beat Tetris. Its stark and nested blocks face every age with the same eternal silence, while the impulse to organise and tidy that they inspire is so deeply rooted in living things that it probably transcends species. Just this morning I watched a crow on TikTok working a stick into a clear plastic tube to dislodge a treat. This crow, that lives in a tree somewhere and probably eats the eggs of other birds because it is compelled to, this crow was ready for Tetris.

For timeliness, though, I give you Tomb Raider - the early Core games. These are the same games that have just been repackaged and remastered in a new collection with an annoyingly unwieldy name. And that all fits, to be honest. To play these games is to play - if you're me - something gorgeous and awkward, something that is gorgeous in part because it is awkward. But the timeliness of it all! I cannot even see these games without slipping back to the 1990s. Scream is on at the cinema. My ex-girlfriend is back from a gap year in Australia and keeps saying everything good is "immense". Everyone I know seems to have bought the same record bag to university. Chocolate bars are going through a great Cambrian explosion (forget Snickers, pick me up a Maverick!), and in every halls of residence there is at least one grubby grey plastic PlayStation, sat upside down so the laser works, with people clustered around Lara Croft's latest. They're stuck on a puzzle. They're playing together, as a kind of chorus. They're calling out suggestions. They've all missed the key that is hidden on the floor behind them.

A warning for what follows, then. Tomb Raider isn't just a game to some of us. It's a madeleine, my Maverick bar, dunked in Lucozade, which takes me back to the time that I was rediscovering games in general. And this time is now so distant, these games such a fond but unplayed fixture of my imagination, that just playing this collection is an act of rediscovery itself, by turns thrilling and melancholy, joyous and frustrating.

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Readers, consider this is a public service announcement for (deep breath) Tomb Raider I-III Remastered Trilogy Starring Lara Croft. Do not, for the love of all that's ancient and holy, play this game with its newly-added modern control scheme. The original tank controls are by far and away the best (and only real) option for going back and experiencing Lara's OG adventures from the late 90s, and I'm not just saying that out of nostalgia. The modern controls are bad, plain and simple, and are as much an enemy to Tomb Raider's incredibly precise mode of 3D platforming as the tigers and wolves that stalk its trap-filled catacombs. They are utterly maddening, and the antithesis of everything Tomb Raider stands for. I implore you, do not go anywhere near them, for your own sake as well as Lara's.

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