The Tomb Raider series has sold over 85 million copies to date, and across its 25 years of life has firmly established itself as one of gaming's most iconic properties. Tomb Raider's sales may be dwarfed by the likes of Pokemon (380 million) and Mario (758 million), but Lara Croft is as recognisable around the world as Pikachu or Mario, and that's no mean feat. Assassin's Creed, Final Fantasy, and GTA all outsell Tomb Raider too, but outside of the gaming sphere, none have a character with the cultural penetration of Lara Croft. It's surprising then, given how perfect a gaming mascot Lara is, that she was never designed as one. In fact, she was never even supposed to get a sequel.

Gavin Rummery was part of the six-strong team that worked on the original Tomb Raider, having been in charge of the game's programming. In a longer interview as part of our Tomb Raider Week coverage, Rummery discussed the phenomenon Lara quickly grew into, citing it as the "most surprising part" of Tomb Raider's legacy all these years later. Especially surprising, Rummery says, because Lara was written as a one and done character.

Related: Hayley Atwell Is The Perfect Choice To Play Lara Croft"None of us expected that," Rummery tells me. "Even Toby [Gard, Lara Croft's creator] had no plans to reuse her in another game – she was just the lead character in this one game we were making.”

Obviously, it's impossible to plan for a character that was supposed to endure for 25 years, go through multiple eras, and sell 85 million copies. But when you look at the other series’ sales figures around Tomb Raider's, Lara does stand out. Mario was built to be a mascot. Pikachu was specifically chosen for its marketability. Even the likes of Grand Theft Auto and Final Fantasy, who had similarly humble beginnings, didn't explode until the later, more ambitious titles. Most of the games that took over the world planned to do it from the start. Tomb Raider did not.

via raidingtheglobe.com

While Rummery was part of the six core developers of Tomb Raider, Paul Douglas was the only one alongside Toby Gard right at the start. Douglas is credited as Lara's co-creator and he penned the original design document, but he had similarly low aspirations for Lara. If she made enough money to get just one sequel, that was the dream, but the team mostly expected she'd be a bit of a cult hit then they'd move on to the next thing.

"We were, for the most part, just a bunch of relatively inexperienced 20-somethings trying to make the best video game we could given the circumstances," Douglas says. "There was no master plan beyond that act of creation. It felt like we were building something unique as 3D character based games were relatively unexplored at that point. We really were just building a game we would enjoy ourselves and hoped it would gain a cult following but certainly weren't thinking mainstream franchise that would last decades."

25 years on, Lara has had 12 mainline sequels with a 13th on the books for some time soon, plus eight spin-offs, three movies with a fourth on the way, and an upcoming anime series starring Hayley Atwell. If the team had planned for Lara to last, perhaps she might not have. A female lead was a risky prospect, and even by '90s standards, several levels were complex and overly fiddly. This was not a game designed for the masses. It was a game the masses decided to embrace, because it was such an organic idea. Lara Croft was never meant to get a sequel, and that's exactly why she deserved one.

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