Tomb Raider: Underworld, Thailand, by Alice.

I was on the QA team for Tomb Raider: Underworld. This meant that I played the game upwards of 40 hours a week for 6 or 7 months. So you’d think I’d remember all the levels perfectly, right? Wrong. XD

This is what I recall of Chapter 2’s Thailand level, one of the most visually impressive areas in the game.

Some of the details I’ve left out due to lack of space, others due to lack of memory. The area just outside the temple (with the waterfall and the tigers) is especially fuzzy in my mind, and I can’t for the life of me remember what the puzzles to lower Shiva’s arms involved. However, I DO remember that there used to be a separate path back to the main room from the “climbing and lizards” area. It was eventually cut from the game because going through it triggered some sort of memory issue that caused the “reflecty gems” to disappear.

[Josh says: totally great.  Iconographic maps like this make me think that it’d be really fantastic (if pretty time-intensive) to play a game of “telephone” with game maps and walkthroughs: start with someone’s map of a game you’ve never played; implement a small game that fits that map; have someone else play that game for a while and then draw their own map of it; have someone further use that map as the blueprint to implement a small game; and so on, mutating a game world through a chain of people like a myth carried on as oral tradition.

Maybe something for folks to do next time Ludum Dare rolls around?]

Tomb Raider II, Great Wall, by nokickingpenguins.

Created using Paint.NET

Tomb Raider II was one of the first video games that I owned and one of the few that my mother played. I think I completed it, but everything after the oil rig is all a bit of a blur.

The most interesting bit of this level is the hidden area right at the end. There’s a hidden tunnel below the zipline which you can reach by carefully grabbing the edge, dropping down and then grabbing a ledge as you fall. This tunnel takes you to a ladder, which leads down to the bottom of the cliff face. At which point you fight a T-Rex and find a golden dragon statue. However, this tunnel is very easy to miss, because the player has no reason because the zipline is so obviously the route forward. I personally only realised that there must be something more than just instant death when Lara plummeted to her death after I’d left go of Ctrl half way across. To add insult to injury something large and green stood on her. This blew my little mind, as clearly the designers wouldn’t have put a monster down there unless it could attack you. And clearly it couldn’t attack you unless you could get down there safely. Which meant that I’d missed something. After this revelation, I spent hours looking for a safe way down until I found the ledge directly below the zipline.

I’m not sure if the T-Rex was programmed to do that, but I’d like to think that it’s something that someone from Core Design deliberately added.

Tomb Raider, Caves, by thaneofheart.

This is Caves, the first level to the original Tomb Raider as best I can remember. At the bear jump there is a pressure plate that leads you back into the wolf bridge room but I wasn’t sure how to draw it in here and have it make sense but I do remember it being there. Might have been a small medikit down with the bear as well. I played this game since the day it came out and last played it about a year ago and it still holds so much wonder for me and many memories of my late sister and I taking turns to get through the later levels which were nightmares like Tomb of Tihocan. This game will forever have a special place in my heart and is tied with many precious memories I would be lost without. 

Tomb Raider II, The Great Wall, by Benjamin Poynter.

I think this represents the idea of ‘mapstalgia’ to me. Of all games that could possibly bring a family together, Tomb Raider II was it. I believe this is attributed to being at the right time and right place (which is arguably the catalyst for ‘all’ nostalgia). The PSX had just released and my folks decided the household upgrade from the wretched old Sega Genesis. After we caught wind and played through the TRII demo (the first half of this map), we bought the real game and the rest is history. Family social time was spent battling angry Frenchmen and irate frogmen as opposed to photo album flipping, and looking back, time well spent. I had no difficulty whatsoever bringing this information up. I guarantee its not the case for some other games I’ve played, but this particular nostalgia is almost known by heart.

[Josh says: I like everything about this.  Really nice draftsmanship.]

Tomb Raider 2, Chinese Wall, by tano.

as far as i remember this was the first level of the game, i loved it when i was a kid. having it in my memory as a 3d map i dont think it translated well into 2d. if you ever have some spare time on your hands go back and play this game, its amazing