Pixelated Perfection! Now You Can Play The Original 'Tomb Raider' In A Browser

Even though #videogames have come a long way since they've become a staple in the pop-culture world, there are some games from previous generations that have retained their importance through the console generations. Tomb Raider is one of those games that hasn't necessarily aged well, but remains one of the more pivotal games of the fifth console generation.

It revolutionized the industry to a point by introducing the first mainstream female lead character and it gave gamers a chance to solve massive scale puzzles. It was #IndianaJones without being a licensed Jones title, and it did it better than any previous game. Tomb Raider was a cult classic and still remains one of the more memorable games ever, and not just because of the pixelated breasts.

Now, any gamer who was around to experience the transition through the console generations will tell you that at times it's fun to return to the miserable glory of the classics like Tomb Raider. Yet short of finding pirated emulators, or still having the consoles available - it can be difficult to embrace the younger-years of gaming. Except now thanks to a few devoted game developers and fans, we can play Tomb Raider in all of it's pixelated glory.

The OpenTomb Project

The OpenTomb Project as stated on the official website is:

OpenTomb is a cross-platform reimplementation of classic Tomb Raider 1—5 engines that were developed by now defunct Core Design. It is not a patcher or DLL extension of already existing engines.The project does not use any old Tomb Raider source code, because all attempts to retrieve sources from Eidos / Core were in vain, despite many petitions by the community. Instead, everything is being developed completely from scratch.

This project has been an adventure for the developers as it seems that they have had no support from the original developers/engineers, and they've chosen to build all five games from scratch.

So far the team has completed the second level of the first game - the City of Vilcambra, and it's fully playable in your preferred browser. This open source port also introduces the ability to switch from first to third person camera views.

If you're interested in testing it out, head over to the team's Github page for all the details.

It's exciting that there is still enough of a fan base for the series that so many devoted fans would take it upon themselves to recreate the classic games, and considering the current direction of the Tomb Raider reboot, it's exciting to know that we have a lot to look forward to between the film reboot staring Alicia Vikander and the next game, Shadow of the Tomb Raider.