Tombraider Remembered

I have very fond memories of Tombraider. It came out in 1996 and was a very refreshing change from the Doom franchise popular at the time. It was 3rd person, focused on exploration just as much as killing monsters, the main character had a much larger range of motion than we were previously used to, and (of course) you got to play a pretty and capable female version of Indiana Jones named Lara Croft. What more could you want? :-)

Giving in to nostalgia, I recently played the Tombraider demo via the excellent DOSBox on my Macbook Pro. 

As far as I can tell the game ran flawlessly but, well, sometimes things are best left in the past. The graphics that I remembered so fondly haven't aged well. And even on a powerful new MBP with DOSBox claiming 0 frameskips, the refreshes still left a lot to be desired and sometimes seemed to roll down the screen. I also tried it inside a Parallels VM with the same results.

Still, it was fun to revive Tombraider. If nothing else it enabled me to give my sons a glimpse of the game that inspired many of the ones they play today. Wish someone would refresh the first game, the subsequent versions never measured up to that initial burst of creativity.