A modder has managed to get the original Tomb Raider running on a Game Boy Advance, thanks to an open-source project known as OpenLara.
There have been several ports of the original Tomb Raider over the years, but a console as old as the Game Boy Advance surely can't run something that took the power of the PS1, right? Thanks to an open-source project called OpenLara, a modder have been able to get the first Tomb Raider working on a Game Boy.
OpenLara comes courtesy of XProger, who was been working on the project since 2017. Since then, they've shown off OpenLara running on several consoles before, including Xbox One, Switch, phones, and even the 3DO. Not only that, but XProger has even managed to get the game running in split-screen, showing off two Lara Crofts running around at once.
As impressive as all of that is, it's the Game Boy Advance port that has surprised a lot of Tomb Raider fans. XProger showed off the port in a new video, where they are seen putting an OpenLara cartridge into a Game Boy Advance and playing through the Croft Manor tutorial and the game's first level. According to XProger, three of the game's levels are currently playable in this form.
It's an impressive feat considering how the Game Boy Advance notoriously wasn't very good with 3D games. Yet, here we have one of the most influential 3D games of all time running at close to 20fps with all the same music and sounds as the original. If you thought the Tomb Raider soundtrack couldn't get any more unnerving, just wait till you've heard it through a Game Boy Advance.
When asked about how they managed to get OpenLara on a cartridge, XProger said, "The engine has been completely rewritten to support old platforms without FPU and even integer divisions on the CPU. It uses software rasterization and matrix math done in ARM assembly".
If you want to check out OpenLara for yourselves, it's available for download on GitHub, although getting it to work on a Game Boy yourself might take a lot of work.