Lara Croft Brings Switch 2 Fans a Precious Artifact

Lara Croft Brings Switch 2 Fans a Precious Artifact

Of course an archaeologist would appreciate the permanence and importance of physical media.

Historically speaking, Nintendo and Tomb Raider took aeons to finally come together properly. And what is Lara Croft all about if not digging around in history? She’s an archaeologist, after all. Admittedly, she’s an unusual sort, one whose tools of choice are a pickax and a pair of Desert Eagle pistols—hardly the kind of kit that the head paleontologist at your local museum takes to the office on an average weekday. But then, the greatest danger they probably have to deal with on the job is a bit of indigestion from snacking on too much freeze-dried astronaut ice cream from the gift shop. Lara, on the other hand, is less about the predictable nine-to-five routine and focuses more on surviving deadly hazards. She’s big on remote work... very remote.

In fact, the lost island of Yamatai is about as remote as it gets. Shrouded in perpetual fog, surrounded by storm-tossed seas and deadly rock formations that make navigation by boat a near-impossible challenge, Yamatai is the setting of Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition and ended up becoming Lara’s proving ground in her very first adventure.

As for the Nintendo thing, well, it took a while for Lara to make her way to Nintendo’s platforms for a proper adventure. A full decade, in fact! The original Tomb Raider debuted on Saturn, PlayStation, and PC in 1996 but skipped over N64. The entire hexalogy that followed through 2002’s Angel of Darkness came and went on competing platforms, while Nintendo fans had to settle for a handful of (very good, but very small) Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance side stories. Lara’s full-scale adventures didn’t reach a Nintendo console until Tomb Raider: Legend showed up at the very, very end of the GameCube’s life (literally five days before the Wii’s American launch!). History repeated itself with the “survivor” trilogy that began in 2013, when Tomb Raider (the one that’s been remastered for Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition, not the original 1996 Tomb Raider that appeared as part of Tomb Raider I-III Remastered appeared on every major system but Nintendo’s.

All the aforementioned games have been collected or remastered for Nintendo machines by this point, but it certainly took a while. But you know what they say: good things come to those who wait. Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition for Switch 2 incorporates all the technical enhancement and content improvements that Crystal Dynamics applied to the 2013 game, giving players access to one of the most critically acclaimed adventures of all time—and doing it on a proper cartridge, not a Game Key Card. But that’s Lara for you: always forging ahead where others fear to go.

Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition charts the beginning of her adventures. As the game begins, she’s a tough young woman, whip-smart and determined, but one who has yet to face true peril or make difficult them-or-me survival decisions. That changes immediately once she finds herself stranded on Yamatai, cut off from friends and family and forced to make her way through all manner of challenges on the bizarre, otherworldly island. From mundane needs like hunger to the direct threat of armed mercenaries to ineffable mystical forces, each hurdle Lara overcomes tests her resolve, her skills, and her personal ethics, forcing her to make terrible choices and endure unbearable hardship. This Lara is a far cry from the tough-talking, sunglasses-wearing adventurer of the classic 32-bit games, but you can certainly see the origins of that steely survivor in this modern classic.

And Nintendo fans can finally experience her harrowing journey for themselves by preordering Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition via Limited Run Games as a Switch 2 cartridge (not a Game Key Card!) through August 2.