Lara Croft from the Tomb Raider series is one of the most iconic characters in video game history, with a franchise that has gone to become a multimedia phenomenon. Lara's design is rooted in characters from another video game series that is equally as important to the genre's history, as the Tomb Raider protagonist was inspired by the female characters from the original Virtua Fighter.
It has become increasingly common for video games to feature female protagonists, but it was a rare sight in the days before the original Tomb Raider. Lara Croft's rise to prominence happened at the time when 3D games were starting to become the norm. This was also the era when video game advertising started to shift, with the hobby moving away from being aimed at children to a teenage and young adult demographic. The kids who grew up with the Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo were older, and third-party developers were quick to change the look of their games and the characters who starred in them.
In the case of Tomb Raider, Lara Croft was heavily promoted on her exaggerated sex appeal. This approach helped propel her to fame, giving her the same level of recognizability as a Mario or Sonic. This element of Lara's design was scrapped for her most recent incarnation, who has more realistic proportions and sports more conservative attire.
Virtua Fighter is iconic in a different way. It was a trail-blazing game, in terms of 3D visuals, character models, and in-game physics. Virtua Fighter has been cited as an inspiration for games like Quake, and it's still renowned today as one of Sega's most popular franchises. Its importance in the history of video games cannot be understated, and it also played a role in the creation of Lara Croft.
Toby Gard, an artist on the original Tomb Raider and the creator of Lara Croft, cited the 3D technology of Virtua Fighter as an inspiration for the visuals of Tomb Raider in a 2001 interview with the BBC. But another aspect of the game played a key role in the design of Lara Croft. The original Virtua Fighter only had two female fighters: Pai Chan and Sarah Bryant. In 2006, Gard told Nintendo Power (via Wikipedia) that, almost every time he saw people playing Virtua Fighter in arcades, there was always someone playing as one of the female characters, even though there were six other fighters in the roster. He realized there was a desire for female characters to take a leading role, and this was the catalyst for Lara Croft's creation.
Pai and Sarah might not be the most famous fighting game characters of all time, but there are other female fighters who became the face of their franchises. Characters like Chun-Li from Street Fighter and Mai Shiranui from The King of Fighters have eclipsed or matched the actual main characters of their franchises, in terms of popularity. The ensemble casts of many fighting games were the first to let women have prominent playable roles, allowing them to escape from the damsel in distress trope. Tomb Raider's Lara Croft led the way for more women to have starring roles as the sole protagonists of their video games, but she was following the women of Virtua Fighter.
Source: BBC, Nintendo Power/Wikipedia
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