Tomb Raider - Game Boy Color - Review

In 1996, Eidos Interactive released their ground-breaking game; Tomb Raider. Developed by Core Design, Tomb Raider’s impact on gaming history was undeniable. Not only was the 3D adventure-platformer a huge success, receiving rave reviews across the board and going on to sell over 7.5 million copies worldwide, but it created a virtual icon in its starring character; Lara Croft. 

In the year 2000, after several successful home console sequels, the series made its portable debut on the Game Boy Color with the games title simply being, Tomb Raider. Despite the ambiguous name, this isn’t a port of Lara Croft’s first adventure but instead a brand new game with a unique story, setting and characters.

In this adventure, Lara is contacted by a Professor Igor Bowmane, who shows her an ancient Aztec manuscript. The manuscript tells the legend of the nightmare stone, a mysterious artefact that contains the entombed spirit of an evil ruler who reigned over the Aztec, Mayan and Inca lands. The stone resides locked inside an obelisk, buried deep inside a vast temple. Professor Bowmane warns Lara that certain interested parties are seeking to uncover the nightmare stone and asks her to find and recover the ancient artefact to ensure it doesn’t fall into the wrong hands.

In the transition to the handheld system, the gameplay has been restyled into a 2D side scrolling-adventure-platformer, somewhat reminiscent of the original Prince of Persia. During the game Lara must overcome obstacles, traverse traps, collect keys and battle beast in order to reach and complete her objective.

Thankfully 8-Bit Lara is every bit as capable as her 3D counterpart as she can run, jump, leap, climb, roll, grab and shoot. In fact it’s quite incredible how the developers managed to squeeze such an in-depth control scheme into the Game Boy Color’s limited button layout. The difference between commands can be quite subtle however and as a result accidental deaths are fairly common. It’s all too easy to press B then Up, rather than Up then B sending Lara leaping forward into a pit of spikes rather than up onto the ledge you intended. Luckily save points are spaced very frequently so these deaths, or any others for that matter, will never set you back more than a few obstacles behind.

As well as the frequent save points, Lara is given a ludicrously generous health bar, which can be depleted by falling too far, being attacked by creatures, being shot by dart traps, pierced by spike traps, or being shot by John Rambo lookalikes. In fact it’s almost laughable how much punishment she can take before needing to top up her health. What’s even more baffling is how many health packs are littered throughout the game, meaning that the only real risk of death is from falling onto spikes which counts as an instakill, or from drowning in the games underwater sections.

As a result I found myself not really bothering to avoid many of the games’ traps, happily taking the hits rather than patiently working my way through. Combat in the game feels equally inconsequential with simply standing still and shooting, whilst taking minor damage, being the only way to deal with the numerous enemies throughout the game. Without any real sense of danger or consequence these things just became minor distractions in the gameplay rather than adding anything of value.

The overall level design is very well thought out with each stage serving as a huge labyrinthine puzzle that needs to be explored and solved. Often you will be presented with several routes to explore, each with numerous, traps, switches and locked doors to tackle. The non-linear layout combined with the lack of distinctive landmarks can make progression and back tracking fairly disorientating though and there were quite a few instances where I found myself completely stuck or lost. It would have been nice for the developers to have included a map feature but this was either over looked or possibly even purposefully omitted.  Thankfully there are fan made maps available online which proved invaluable throughout my play through and almost certainly prevented me from quitting due to frustration.

The graphics are incredible for a Game Boy Color title and at times the game looks like it could pass for an early Game Boy Advance release. The levels are extremely colourful and detailed, with each area having a nice distinct style. There are huge amounts of detail in both the foreground and background and even some nice layering effects which allow Lara to walk behind certain objects. Lara’s animation is particularly impressive too and it’s clear that the developers worked hard to give her fluid and realistic movements. They even managed to squeeze in some rudimentary boob physics into Lara’s walking animation, which is certainly…well, thorough. Throughout the game there are also still, pre-rendered cut scenes which show off the GBC’s ‘Hi-Color’ mode and serve as a nice way to progress the games story.

What music there is in the game is also very good with a particularly nice 8-bit rendition of the Tomb Raider theme for the title screen. In keeping with the 3D games though there is no music during the actual gameplay. It’s an idea that worked well with the large cavernous environments of the 32-bit games, as the sounds of Lara’s footsteps and grunts provided a nice ambience that helped to make the levels feel wondrous and remote. In this game however I would have appreciated at least some ambient noise or music as often I had to wonder if my speaker was even working. The effect just isn’t the same on the handheld game.

Believe it or not the game was actually awarded a score of 99% by Total Game Boy back at the time of its release with the magazine going as far as to state; ‘it’s as close as you’ll get to perfection.’ I certainly wouldn’t go that far, and I’m sure I would have found that statement ridiculous even back then. Nevertheless, the game is certainly an impressive addition to the Game Boy Color’s library and one that I can easily recommend to fans of the series.

Gamers who appreciate a slower pace and an emphasis on exploring and puzzle solving should definitely check this one out. The game could have used a little more variation in its gameplay as finding keys and switches, and jumping over pits can become increasingly repetitive but the for the most part the experience is consistently solid and satisfying.

The game can be picked up for only a few pounds so if you like what you’ve seen then why not pick up a copy of Tomb Raider for your Game Boy Color and set out in search for the Nightmare Stone.