Tomb Raider II (1997)
Core Design's Globe-Trotting Blockbuster Sequel Taking Lara Croft From Venice Canals to Tibet
Tomb Raider II is a 1997 action-adventure platform game developed by Core Design and published by Eidos Interactive for the PlayStation and Windows PC. Produced in an intense eight-month crunch after creator Toby Gard's departure—led by programmer Gavin Rummery, producer Troy Horton, designers Neal Boyd and Heather Gibson, and composer Nathan McCree—it propelled Lara Croft to peak late-1990s pop-culture superstardom.
Chasing the Dagger of Xian Across Venice, Shipwrecks, and Tibet
Following the phenomenon of 1996's Tomb Raider—and Sony signing an agreement making the console versions PlayStation exclusives through the end of the decade—Derby studio Core Design expanded Lara Croft's horizons from subterranean tombs to sunlit global spectacle. Racing Italian cult leader Marco Bartoli and his Fiamma Nera Syndicate for the mythical Dagger of Xian—capable of transforming whoever plunges it into their own heart into an immortal dragon—Lara leaps across trap-laden towers of the Great Wall of China, pilots speedboats over naval mines through Venice's canals accompanied by Vivaldi-inspired strings, explores the inverted, barnacle-crusted hull of the sunken liner Maria Doria forty fathoms underwater, and rides armed snowmobiles across Tibetan monasteries.
Dynamic Lighting Flares, Expanded Combat, and Croft Manor Lore
Built on an upgraded grid-platforming engine by Gavin Rummery—complete with Lara's newly animated flowing braid that technical constraints had forced out of the 1996 game—Tomb Raider II introduced ladder-and-cliff climbing, mid-air somersault directional flips, wading through shallow currents, and crackling chemical flares that cast real-time dynamic illumination inside pitch-black caverns. A substantially heavier human enemy count pushed Lara's arsenal toward M16 rifles, automatic pistols, harpoon guns, and grenade launchers, capped by an iconic night-raid epilogue inside Croft Manor—where millions of players mischievously locked Lara's rattling butler Winston inside the walk-in freezer, helping drive lifetime sales past seven million copies.