Video Game / Tomb Raider I

This page is for the first game in the Tomb Raider series. For the series as a whole, go here and for the 2013 reboot of the same title go here.

The game that started it all.

Natla: Feast your eyes on this, Lara. How does that make your wallet rumble?
Lara: I'm sorry. I only play for sport.

The first game in the Tomb Raider series was created by a team of just six people, and was originally released for Sega Saturn, PlayStation and PC (and Mac) in 1996. A remake called Tomb Raider: Anniversary was released in 2007; this version altered the game's events to take place within the continuity of the first Crystal Dynamics reboot.

Lara Croft is hired by a wealthy businesswoman, Jacqueline Natla, to recover a piece of an artifact called the Scion, from the lost city of Vilcabamba. After Lara is inevitably betrayed by her employer, she races across the world to find the two other pieces of the Scion and prevent it from falling into Natla's hands. Along the way, Lara visits Peru, Greece, Egypt, and a remnant of Atlantis.

The game received sizable critical acclaim (including a couple of "game of the year" awards), and established many of the tropes of the Action-Adventure genre. As a result of the amount of genre conventions it established, it is frequently cited as one of the most influential games of all time.

The game was made for Sega Saturn, PlayStation and PC, with ports to N-gage, Windows Pocket PC, and iOS.

A remaster of Tomb Raider (alongside II & III in one collection) for PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S & Nintendo Switch was released on February 14th 2024, featuring significantly updated graphics and the option to use more modern controls.

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The game contains examples of:

• Advertising Campaigns: The U.S. ad was very strange, and a classic example of a Dada Ad: Over a desert setting, an announcer asks, "What makes you sweat? Is it passion? (brief shot of two people making love) Or is it just heat? (snake slithering) What about not knowing if the very next breath will be your last? (shot of man pounding on a locked door, presumably running out of oxygen) What about all three?" (cue gameplay footage)
• Atlantis: From where the Scion and the Three Rulers originated. By the end of the game Lara visits one of the ruined, but still semi-functional outposts.
• Ascended Glitch: The game features the "corner bug", which causes Lara to warp to the top of tall structures. The developers were aware of this, and placed a large medipack on top of a tall column in Palace Midas that can only be reached with the help of this bug. This also started a Running Gag of unreachable large medipacks that lasted for the first three games.
• A Winner Is You: The pyramid explodes, Lara sails away, a couple of seconds of credits rolling in silence, then back to the title screen.
• Bat Out of Hell: Vampire bats are the first enemies you encounter.
• Bears Are Bad News: Vicious brown bears are featured in the first two levels.
• Behind the Black: Pierre will shoot at Lara forever and take an infinite number of bullets, until he is offscreen, at which point he escapes. Sometimes he simply vanishes in mid-air after taking enough damage, or the player can choose to ignore him, and he will not spawn again for the rest of the level. This jarring behavior was even lampshaded in the remake during Pierre's cutscene, during which he screws with Lara by constantly teleporting around her (off-screen) as she vainly attempts to follow his voice.
• Big "NO!": Said by Natla when Lara aims at the Scion.
• Bigfoot, Sasquatch, and Yeti: The first time we see Lara it's of her on the cover of a magazine where she has successfully hunted Bigfoot.
• Block Puzzle: Many of them, the frustration often exaggerated greatly due to the slow push-pull controls.
• Body Horror: The Atlanteans, deformed human-like creatures with no skin on their bodies.
• Bond Villain Stupidity: Natla defies this trope when her goons corner Lara and recover the stolen MacGuffin; she admires it for a second, then turns to her henchmen and lets out an impatient "Well? KILL HER!" Said henchmen neglect to shoot at Lara until after she makes a High-Dive Escape into the canyon below.
• Boring, but Practical:
  • Lara's basic pistols are this, since they have infinite ammo and can be used whenever firing from a position that an enemy cannot reach her. Takes longer than using stronger weaponry, but saves a lot of ammo and medipacks.
  • The Shotgun actually becomes this for the battle against the Abomination in The Great Pyramid. While slower than the Uzis, its massive damage at close range factors in heavily when you realize that the ledge Lara shares with the thing is pretty small and keeps her close to it...
• Bottomless Magazines: Lara never runs out of rounds for her pistols, and while her other guns will, she never reloads them either.
• Cave Behind the Falls: Lost Valley. A minor example later occurs in Natla's Mines, where a small waterfall obscures an entrance.
• Characterization Marches On: Lara's personality resembles more of a cheeky girl-next-door type here.
• Collapsing Lair: Taking Qualopec's piece of the Scion caused the tomb to collapse, prompting Lara to make a quick getaway. And once Lara shoots the Scion, the entire Atlantean pyramid begins to fall apart, opening up new paths and eventually exploding.
• Cool and Unusual Punishment: In the Palace Midas statue room, climbing on top of the hand will turn Lara into gold. This is based on the story of Midas who gained the ability to turn anything he touched into gold.
• Convection, Schmonvection: One of the worst offenders in video game history, as it normally plays it totally straight, but at one point in order to acquire a secret health pack, Lara actually has to crawl over a small lava flow to reach it.
• Cowboy: One of Natla's henchmen, who wears a Stetson hat, carries revolvers and speaks with a thick Southern accent
• Deep South: Larson speaks with an accent so cartoonish it's hard to take him seriously.
• Direct Continuous Levels:
  • Individual levels do this, but chapters involve a transition to a different location. There's still a stats screen at the end of each level, but the transition otherwise appears smooth. This feature was kept in Anniversary.
  • Level filenames indicate that certain levels in the game, like the Lost Valley^*LEVEL3A and the Tomb of Qualopec^*LEVEL3B, The Cistern^*LEVEL7A and the Tomb of Tihocan^*LEVEL7B, and the entirety of Egypt and Atlantis, were once part of a single large level before being split into smaller segments. This can also be noticed in the passport stamps that Lara collects from each location; she won't gain stamps from locations that were originally parts of larger levels.
• Door to Before: There's several of these throughout the game, with the most noticeable one being right at the end of the penultimate level: if, for whatever reason, you bypass the Scion and instead decide to jump down onto the large platform below (i.e. where the next level starts), a conveniently-placed door opens for you to return to the room just outside where the Scion is housed.
• Down the Drain: The Cistern is arguably a subversion, being one of the more fun and interesting levels in the game. The surprisingly adequate swimming controls help.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: this game differs in many ways from its successors:
  • Graphics are much blockier and textures are extremely pixelated compared to even Tomb Raider II. Lara herself looks quite awkward without her signature braid, which was removed during gameplay due to engine limitations. The developers tried to model the braid, as seen in the earliest prototypes, but were ultimately unwilling to sacrifice level detail and performance. Likewise, Lara's shirt lacked the low cut that future games would use and her boots in the first game had red laces while later games made them tan. Lara's breasts in the original were infamously triangular due to the limitations of the game engine, with following games featuring more refined models.
  • Lara is limited to four weapons: Pistols, Shotgun, Magnums, and Uzis. Later games would feature much larger arsenals.
  • Lara's moveset is limited, without the ability to climb walls (though she can pull up ledges), sprint, crouch, flip in mid-air, or roll underwater. The mid-air flip and underwater roll moves were retroactively implemented in the 2024 remaster.
  • Only a handful of human enemies appear, and they all play prominent roles in the game's plot. Later games would pit Lara against hordes of faceless, gun-toting Mooks.
  • No outdoor areas appear to exist, owing to engine limitations preventing the game from having proper skyboxes. Even places that should be outside, like Lost Valley and parts of the Colosseum, just have a black featureless sky which is mostly obscured by black distance fog. In commentary for Tomb Raider: Anniversary, designer Toby Gard mentioned that he always wanted these areas to be outside with a blue sky. In Lara's house, when you look out the windows, you can see that the sky is white textures rather than a skybox, as if the house is inside a cave. In the Unfinished Business add-on, stars were added to the black sky of the first two levels as a unique compromise. The 2024 remaster would finally add proper skyboxes throughout the game.
  • The DOS version also removed the entire soundtrack from the PS1/Saturn versions and replaced it with level-specific ambiances; this didn't occur with any future game. Some unofficial patches can rectify this issue, and the mobile version allows toggling between the ambiances and the PS1/Saturn soundtrack. The 2024 remaster combines both soundtracks.
  • This is the only game where Lara is voiced by Shelley Blond, and is actually the only time in the series where a voice actress only plays Lara for one game. Some of Blond's grunts were reused in later games leading to some mild vocal dissonance.
  • Lara's mansion is quite different here compared to the later installments, being little more than a basic tutorial level. The music room has an exercise mat, which is not present in later iterations. Likewise, Lara's bedroom isn't accessible and there's no kitchen or attic. The outside areas were also not accessible. The level was even called "Gym" in pre-release materials, a name that made it to the Sega Saturn version; this was changed to "Lara's Home" for the PlayStation and DOS versions as well as all future games.
  • Flares didn't exist in the first game and dark areas were quite rare due to the engine's lack of support for dynamic lighting of any kind.
  • Lara's death animation when standing still has her slump over on her side. Later games would have fall onto her knees before fully collapsing.
  • Lara's passport in the options menu has its middle pages decorated with various stamps, the amount of which gradually increases as you enter a new level. II and III did away with this, opting instead for simple blank white pages, in addition to changing the colour of the passport from black to red. (Though the stamps were added to II and ''III' and the expansions in the remaster.)
  • When Lara has a weapon drawn, the weapon's magazine/shells would also show up next to the ammo counter for visual flair. This wouldn't be used in later games.
  • This is the only game where Lara is truly alone for the adventure, as her one ally, the guide that takes her to entrance of Qualopec's tomb is killed off in the same cutscene he is introduced in.
  • The health and air meters were a single color with some shading. Later games would give them multiple colors in a gradient, although the PC versions would keep the singular colors.
  • This is the only Tomb Raider game officially available on MS-DOS. Later entries starting with II require Windows.
  • Lara destroys the Scion at the very end to prevent Natla's plans coming to fruition. This is the only instance where Lara destroys an artifact she was hunting for. Other games either let her keep the artifacts she finds or forces her to leave them behind.
  • The medi packs have a red cross on them and the sequel would use them as well. Using the red cross is a violation of the Geneva Convention, so from the third game on, green crosses were used instead. The remaster would also change the red crosses to green for the first and second games.
• Establishing Character Moment: The opening cutscene, which in less than 60 seconds established Lara as a character. Players learn from it she's famous in-universe, doesn't care about money nor social conveyances and is guided by nothing else than the thrill of adventure. She's barely visible in the cutscene, adding a mysterious aura to her image. Directly followed with her acrobatics and swift fight with a pack of wolves in the next cutscene, so everyone can rest assured she can take care of herself and get where and what she wants to.
• Excuse Plot: Natla sends Lara after a piece of the Scion, tries to off her afterwards, and Lara ends up hunting down the other two pieces out of spite long before the Evil Plan is revealed. The plot is so threadbare that it's obviously just there to tie together why Lara goes where she does for the next fantastical set-piece batch of stages.
• Famed In-Story: Lara is already a well known adventurer in her first game, having at the very least, hunted and subdued Bigfoot.
• French Jerk: Pierre Dupont, who is smug, cowardish and obviously Would Hit a Girl. Surprisingly, his smugness is somewhat justified, as he manages to beat Lara to the second part of Scion.
  Pierre: A little late for the prize giving, non? Still, it's the taking part which counts!
• Game-Breaking Bug: The infamous secret bug in the final level, where it is only possible to obtain a maximum of 2 out of 3 secrets even if you had got them all. This is due to the third and final secret of the level accidentally being defined as the second, and therefore only registers if you didn't get the actual second secret beforehand.
• The Goomba: The bats are the weakest enemies in the entire franchise; one shot from a single pistol is all it takes to take them down.
• Grave Robbing: It's the only part of the series to truly earn the Tomb Raider title - no future installment was so focused on ancient burial sites.
• Guns Akimbo: Lara uses two pistols and Uzis at once.
• Heartbeat Soundtrack: Further establishing Atlantis levels as womb ones.
• Hell Is That Noise:
  • The creepy, raspy breathing of the mummies and Atlanteans, and, by extension, the horrible, high-pitched shrieks they emit when attacking Lara.
  • The deep groaning noises the Abomination makes.
  • The noises the various animals make - usually while offscreen and not yet attacking Lara - can be this thanks to their sudden nature.
  • If you wait long enough in areas with wolves in without startling them into attacking, they will get up and make this...odd growling sound that seems like it belongs more to a hyena or a jackal.
  • In the PC version the Atlantis levels are accompanied by a heartbeat sound effect, and muffled roaring sounds. Also the Cistern has ambiance of crocodiles hissing and growling in the background.
• High-Dive Escape: Lara dives down a canyon to escape Natla and her henchmen.
• Indy Escape: Occurs a few times with boulders, but the straightest example is in the Tomb of Qualopec, in which a boulder chases Lara down a narrow hallway. It's easy to outrun it if the player is aware of its existence.
• Invisible Grid: The entire game world is based on a block system, most noticeably in areas like the Lost Valley. As such, Lara's movements are designed to follow the format: she will always run forward one square, roll forward one square, etc. The system was kept for the next four games, but it's most noticeable in this game due to its blockier levels and lower-quality textures.
• Island Base: Doubles as Island of Mystery: The remnants of Atlantis lay hidden under a volcanic island, and Natla carries out her evolutional experiments there.
• Jump Scare:
  • Whenever mummies or Atlanteans are involved, especially one particular corridor leading out of the panther room in the City of Khamoon...
  • The Tomb of Qualopec also has a raptor that likes to pop out from around a corner as you approach it.
• Kaizo Trap: Once you've managed to defeat the torso boss, you'll need to stand clear of it, because it will explode like the other Atlantians. You'll be in a world of pain to finally overcome a frustrating boss that easily kills you, only to get killed by this, forcing you to start the fight all over again!
• Killer Gorilla: Aggressive gorillas are featured in the Greece levels. One strategy guide lampshades and handwaves this, pointing out gorillas are normally gentle creatures and the ones in the game must be just cranky.
• Kubrick Stare: When Lara is pushed against the rock in the cinema after "Sanctuary of the Scion".
• Lava Adds Awesome: One of the dominant elements of Atlantis is a lot of flowing lava.
• Living Dinosaurs: Peru has them on an isolated plateau, especially prominent in the aptly named "Lost Valley" level. Probably one of the most memorable and recognizable parts of the game is the encounter with a T. rex.
• Living Statue: In the Tomb of Tihocan. Right as you enter the actual tomb itself, one of the statues springs to life, revealing itself as an Atlantean centaur.
• Lost World: You know from the name alone the "Lost Valley" might go strange, but then raptors show up out of the blue and things only get weirder from there.
• MacGuffin Delivery Service: Lara, along with other Adventurer Archaeologists and Hired Guns, is sent on a search for remains of the Atlantean Scion. After she collects all three parts of it, she is instantly blindsided by Natla's henchmen and robbed of everything but her medpacks.
• Marathon Level: Almost the entire game is built out of these, creating complex and elaborate labyrinths to traverse. There is nothing wrong in spending a hour per level, even if the player already knows their layouts by heart. Levels that would be considered long even by the game's own standards include Palace Midas, Obelisk of Khamoon, Natla's Mines and Atlantis. Anniversary got a lot of flak for trimming levels down to just their most iconic elements, excising everything else.
• Mayincatec: The City of Vilcabamba is based on the real-life last outpost of the Inca. It contains a gold idol modelled on a Tumi, a ceremonial knife used in sacrifices.
• Misidentified Weapons: The Uzis are actually Mac-10's.
• Misplaced Wildlife: Greece is simply the worst offender, with gorillas, lions, and crocodiles everywhere. The Colosseum tries to justify it by implying that they were brought there, an element more pronounced in Anniversary in which Lara actually sees the cages that housed them. Not to mention raptors and a T. rex in a secluded valley in Peru (interestingly, it would later be discovered that large raptors did live in South America, but they didn't look like the ones in the game).
• Missing the Good Stuff: "Right, now I'd better take off these wet clothes!" Then the level ends.
• Never Smile at a Crocodile: You fight crocodiles both in water and on land in the Greece and Egypt levels.
• No Flow in CGI: The reason Lara has no ponytail outside of FMVs. The earliest prototypes of the game featured a much higher-poly Lara, even including a ponytail, but this caused severe performance issues. Starting from Tomb Raider II, Lara's ponytail was included in-game. Several fan-made mods attempted to implement her braid during gameplay with varying degrees of success, and the 2024 remaster finally incorporated it properly.
• No-Gear Level: Lara is ambushed as she exits the Egyptian tomb where she found the last piece of the Scion. Although she manages to best her captors, she loses all her weaponry, and thus needs to progress through the first part of Natla's Mines without her guns. It set a precedent for the rest of the series up until Underworld to have such a level Once per Episode.
• Nothing Is Scarier: This game, along with the next four, has a low draw distance (this one much more so of course). Anything that's not loaded and/or near Lara is completely black. Right from the very first level, you'll encounter this - and you'll always have to go towards the darkness to see what's actually there. This is combined with the unnerving soundtrack to create a frightening experience. This is somewhat downplayed in the 2024 remaster which features significantly increased draw distances.
  • The above-mentioned No-Gear Level tries to evoke this, with Lara stripped of all her weapons, exploring enemy territory, and knowing that Natla's goons are hiding around here somewhere. While the feeling will fade if you're aware of where the point is that they'll attack, first time players will probably be uneasy to turn any corner for fear of being caught unarmed and helpless.
• Nuckelavee: The skinless centaur enemies near the middle of the game bear a strong resemblance to the mythological Nuckelavee and are some of the first enemies that are more supernatural and horror-themed.
• One-Hit Kill: The torso boss can kill Lara if it gets too close to her; in one of the game's more horrifying death sequences, it will pick her up by the leg, whip her around like a ragdoll, and smash her into the ground, seemingly uncomprehending that it's even hurting her.
• Panthera Awesome: The lions in the Greece levels and the black panthers in the Egypt levels are all vicious.
• Quirky Miniboss Squad: Natla's henchmen form one. It consists of a Scary Black Man, a Cowboy and a kid riding a skateboard while shooting Uzis
• Raptor Attack: Lara encounters large Deinonychus-like raptors in an isolated valley in Peru.
• Reality Has No Soundtrack:
  • The PC version has no event music (although it came with a few unique ambient themes, all of which were reused in II and III in modified form), although some later versions added the music back in.
  • The N-Gage version has no music or ambient noises whatsoever, due to hardware limitations.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Let's just say that really pissed off look Lara gives while chasing down Natla and her henchmen on her bike after the Egypt levels is a pretty tame example given that Lara is clearly VERY angry at being used and nearly murdered. The player, however, knows that ass-beatings are on the way...
• Rule of Cool: Dinosaurs in an isolated valley, fighting animals in an abandoned colosseum, King Midas palace, mummies, centaurs, mutants, Atlantean ruins, skateboarder boss... Only maybe the expansion pack for Tomb Raider II is more "cool", but it's also strongly implied to be nothing else than a dream, while events of this game happened for sure in-universe.
  • Let's not forget about Lara herself, who is larger than life and goes through just plain weird adventures over the course of the game unscratched. Or doing it all for sport.
  • Speaking of, Lara has a number of moves in the game that serve no purpose whatsoever other than looking damned cool. Holding walk when you jump forward will make Lara do a swan dive (The dive jump eventually gained an actual application, being needed to pass through certain precise jump moments across later Core and Crystal games. And, of course, still looking cool), and holding walk when pulling yourself up a ledge will make Lara do a stylish handstand and gently roll forward onto her feet. Even the instruction manual which teaches you how to do the dive (you need to figure out the handstand on your own) makes it clear the only purpose is to turn on some swag:
    This move has no real advantage over jumping into the water other than it looks great!
  • Toby Gard's commentary for Anniversary only pushed it further, explaining such details as mutants not throwing fireballs but explosive sacks of meat among the things lost due to low resolution.
• Sadly Mythtaken: The four rooms of St. Francis' Folly, in Greece, inexplicably include Norse god Thor among the Greco-Roman myths Damocles, Atlas and Neptune. Anniversary understandably changes that to Hephaestus (while also correcting Neptune to its Greek name Poseidon for consistency's sake).
• Savage Wolves: Wolves are a common enemy in the Peru levels.
• Scary Black Man: One of Natla's henchmen who takes the Scion from Lara.
• Scenery Porn: Upon release, the game was simply gorgeous, being one of the first games to utilise 3D environment in full extent and in the same provide "cinematic" feel due to third-person perspective. Some of the locations are still impressive, if not by sheer graphics, then their ingenious design.
• Schmuck Bait:
  • In Natla's Mines, one of the three fuses you need to collect is just lying out in the open for you to grab. Take care you don't venture too far past it, as doing so will trigger the fight with the Cowboy.
  • One nasty lever in Atlantis does nothing but release a wall of lava onto Lara. There's no way to tell it apart from the other levers.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: What Tihocan and Qualopec did to Natla as punishment for her betrayal.
• Sean Connery Is About to Shoot You: One of the pieces of official artwork for the first game had Lara pointing her gun at the camera.
• Sequence Breaking: You can skip getting Lara's pistols back in Natla's Mines, as there is a hidden shotgun not far from where you fight the Cowboy, but you have to be quick in avoiding him as he has Lara's magnums and can whittle her health down very quickly.
• Short-Range Shotgun: While the range of the weapon itself isn't a problem, pellets spread pretty wide, so on any other distance than up close it's hard to hit moving targets.
• Shout-Out:
  • The Ark of the Covenant in Lara's home.
  • During Lara's battle with the Skateboard Kid, when you start to shoot him he'll say "You firin' at me? You firin' at me, huh? Ain't nobody else here - you must be firin' at me!"
• Significant Wardrobe Shift: In the N-Gage port, the game's promotional renders, Lara's outfit and look are based on Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness, as both came out at about the same time.
• Skippable Boss: You can actually ignore Natla after you knock her down the first time and focus on escaping, as she won't be able to hit you from the platforms you need to use to escape.
• Sliding Scale of Gameplay and Story Integration: In the remaster any boss Lara fights but doesn't kill will flee/be defeated before their health bar fully drains.
• Snub by Omission: As Lara reads the epitaph for Tihocan, it mentions him as one of "two just rulers of Atlantis". It's quickly revealed their were actually three rulers.
• Super Not-Drowning Skills: It's possible to flood the Cistern while Pierre is there. If you then swim down to him, he's just running around like he's not underwater. (And shooting you, which, since Lara has no underwater weapons in this game, means you're defenseless.)
• Suspicious Videogame Generosity: At the end of the Sanctuary of the Scion, Lara ascends a spiraling series of ramps that seems to go on forever, and the game provides her a few Magnum clips on the way (as well as a save crystal). Picking up the item at the end opens the gate and four Atlanteans immediately converge on her.
• Terrifying Tyrannosaur: Lara encounters a Tyrannosaurus rex prowling in a secluded valley in Peru, one of the most memorable moments in the game. If it gets her with its jaws, it's an instant game-over.
• Third-Person Seductress: Trope Maker. This is Lara Croft we're talking about.
• Treacherous Quest Giver: Both Larson, who is sent as a messenger, and Natla. He's suppose to rob Lara after she collects Qualopec's piece of the Scion, while Natla continuously uses Miss Croft to get the whole artifact.
• Trope Codifier: Popularised a lot of the tropes used in 3D Action-Adventure games, and is likely the Trope Maker for some.
• Unique Enemy: There are only three bears in the entire game and one of them is fully optional, guarding a secret.
• Unwinnable by Mistake: The main room in the Cistern has two doors opened by rusty keys. The right door is intended to be accessed only after flooding the Cistern. It is possible to open the right door while the area is still dry, drop down into the spikes and survive. If you do this, you will be stuck down there and unable to complete the level.
• Unwitting Pawn: Lara was used the whole time and even when she supposedly gained an upper hand, it was still part of the plan to get all three pieces of the Scion from her, without paying and probably leaving her body behind.
• Updated Re-release: First a "Gold" version for PC, then ported to iOS/Android in 2013 with some new features such as HD textures for most levels. Unfortunately the port is somewhat half-baked—the achievements are copied off of Anniversary's, and don't work properly, and HD textures don't exist for the latter two locations. Eventually, a proper multiplatform remaster would release in 2024.
• Villain Ball:
  • Natla hires Lara to find a piece of the ancient Scion hidden in Qualupec's Tomb, and then sends Larson to kill her and take it from her. Why she didn't just wait for Lara to bring it back as per their agreement is anyone's guess, since she could have just as easily sent goons to try and kill Lara if Lara decided to hedge on their agreement. This backfires spectacularly as not only does Lara take out Larson but also decides she's going to go after the other two Scion pieces just for the thrill of it, leading her to foil Natla's entire plan.
  • At two separate points in the game both Pierre and Larson actually beat Lara to a piece of the Scion. Do they take the damned thing and peace out? No, they stand their ground, gloat, and try and kill Lara purely out of spite, which ends about as well as you'd expect for them: the woman who's had no problem gunning down dozens of wild animals, dinosaurs, and mutants, and has won at least one fight against the two of them already, easily dispatches the both of them.
• Version-Exclusive Content: The DOS version added three extra ambience themes to the levels in addition to the one used in the console versions, which was now the ambience theme for the Peru levels.
• Womb Level: The Atlantis levels have walls of pulsating flesh and tissue mixed with tons of lava. The hideous Meat Moss is implied to be a byproduct of Natla's deranged experiments to create life.
• You Dirty Rat!: Rats are a common enemy in the game, grown to massive size (bigger than Lara's head), with giant red eyes and the only other enemy besides crocs that can attack Lara on land or in water.

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Tomb Raider was later re-released on PC as Tomb Raider: Gold, and contained four extra levels known as Unfinished Business. The first two depict Lara's return to Egypt, while the latter two are an extended ending to the original Tomb Raider story, where Lara must escape from the exploding pyramid after dispatching Natla. This campaign is also available on the iOS/Android ports as well as the 2024 remaster.

Unfinished Business contains examples of:

• A Winner Is You: A copy-pasted ending from the main game.
• Death Trap: While obviously a staple of the Tomb Raider series, Unfinished Business contains a section where the player has three routes to take, two safe, one deadly. This death trap is very difficult to escape, and doing so causes some bugs later in the level. In fact, developer commentary on this level, featured in the TR Level Editor manual, states that this was a deliberate, sadistic choice on the part of the designer. Well, he certainly did his job.
• Early Game Hell: Your main enemies in the first level are panthers, crocodiles, and the Atlantean monsters. You only have your pistols and later on, the shotgun. Health packs are also hard to find. The enemy types don't change as you progress to later levels, but supplies start to become slightly more abundant to ease the sting of the level designs.
• It's All Upstairs From Here: Atlantean Stronghold: You start at the top, plummet to the bottom, then spend the rest of the level climbing back to the top...so you can fall all the way down to the bottom again to reach the exit.
• Living Statue: The cat statues can turn into panthers. This trait would later become a staple of the Gold expansion games.
• Expansion Pack: Contains several new levels with difficult challenges.
• Marathon Level: Pretty much all of them from start to finish, taking roughly half an hour for each level.
• Named by the Adaptation: The second Atlantean Stronghold that Lara explores in Unfinished Business is unnamed originally but is named Ascension Island (as a nod to the cancelled Tomb Raider Ascension) in the remaster in the new passport stamps for the Unfinished Business levels.
• Nintendo Hard: Much harder than the main game due to the high abundance of death traps and enemy placement. Health and ammo pickups are also more scarce.
• One-Hit Kill: Some of the levels have certain floors that will kill you instantly if you land or step on them and almost none of them have any indication that they're dangerous. One notable case is in the first level right by the exit. If you try to go past the exit, Lara is promptly killed if you stand on a certain sand tile. Another level has a trap that, when activated, turns the ground beneath you into a slope, which then has you sliding down into a pit where Lara dies on the spot and it's not from fall damage. The remastered version would set Lara on fire when she died to these traps to show how she died rather than her spontaneously dying from nothing.
• Schmuck Bait: The majority of item pickups and switches will trigger enemy spawns on you. Two notable cases are in the Atlantean Stronghold level: two switches are next to each other. One switch opens a door while the other spawns four monsters in the room next to you. Another switch opens a door containing two shotgun ammo pickups, but a monster will spawn in the room as soon as you approach the door.
• Soft Water: Happens very often, right from the very beginning of the first level, but the end of Atlantean Stronghold contains a particularly ridiculous example. Lara needs to line up a precision jump into one of the grooves in the building on the ground. The "groove" turns out to be a vertical shaft spanning at least ten floors (judging by texture changes) and is long enough that some versions of the game actually crash while Lara falls. Of course, at the bottom is a pool of water.

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