A Lost OG “Tomb Raider” Game Has Been Discovered: Here’s How You Can Play It

The game was almost an Indiana Jones game.

The internet has come through again by bringing gamers some quality content for the holiday season.

On Thursday, fans of the original Tomb Raider games came across the assets believed to be of the lost Tomb Raider game Tomb Raider: 10^th Anniversary, which was being developed back in 2006 but got canned just before it was finished.

Image: Core Design

The original game, made for the Sony PSP, was pushed aside in favour of a cross-platform remake instead. This game later came out in 2007 and was called Tomb Raider: Anniversary.

Not long after the OG game was canned, the assets were used to put together an Indiana Jones game, which sadly also didn’t see the light of day.

Soon after, the developers of the combination game, Core Design, shut down in 2010 and the game was lost.

Now—rediscovered by fans—the assets were posted in an internet archive so that old and new fans can play the game that they’ve been waiting 15 years to play.

According to the fans, there were several requests made to license holders for permission to publish the content, but no one got back to them. So, they just kind of ran with it.

Image: Core Design

So, here’s how you can play.

Thankfully, fans who released the game have actually made the assets playable but there are some things you will need to do in order to get your hands on it and actually get it working.

Firstly, you’ll want to download the patch into Visual Studio and either have access to a PS4 or Xbox 360 controller. Keyboard controls have not been ironed out yet.

Then you’ll want to download artbase and extract it to C: drive otherwise it won’t run at all.

From here you can download the patch and use run.bat to launch the game.

All the files for the game can be found here and some more detailed instructions, as well as info on updates, bug fixes and cheats, can be found here.

When you’re finally in the game you will be able to explore several locations, climb, jump and swim around, and access several levels including Greece, Peru and Croft Manor.

Because the game was never finished there aren’t any enemies to defeat but hey, at least it’s not too challenging, right?

For now, the game is up and running in a vintage software archive and provided the license holders don’t try to remove it, should stay up and remain easily available to give us our daily dose of nostalgia.

Header Image: Core Design