Core Design's Tomb Raider: 10th Anniversary Edition is Here

: Roli; 10 January 2021

2021 (also the year of the 25th anniversary of the Tomb Raider series) starts with a bang because Core Design's cancelled Tomb Raider: 10th Anniversary Edition has been resurfaced as a kinda playable, early alpha. What a nice, unexpected surprise, right?!

Short backstory

First, back in June of 2006, a trailer leaked online that showed some snippets from a remaster/remake of the very first Tomb Raider (1996) game. It was branded as Tomb Raider: 10th Anniversary Edition, developed by Core Design (the original team). The game was running on PSP and used the Free Running (another title by Core) engine. They had a fair chunk of the game done.

SCi had purchased Eidos in 2005, and in mid-2006, Core Design was picked up by Rebellion Developments, but the Tomb Raider property stayed with Eidos/SCi. So technically 10th Anniversary Edition was being developed by a third party.

When the trailer surfaced, SCi immediately released a statement, confirming the game was official but cancelled.

However... in that time Crystal Dynamics also worked on their remake (Tomb Raider: Anniversary) of the timeless classic, while they had no idea about Core Design's version.

And now...

...Core Design's Tomb Raider: 10th Anniversary Edition's unfinished game assets are available for everyone as a reskinned Indiana Jones game and as a National Treasure game.

But... thanks to our incredible community (especially to Ash from Tomb of Ash, Gh0stBlade, XProger, Nakamichi680, Angel in the Dark, N.Chabb, and many other, talented fans), after nearly 15 years we are now able to explore this cancelled gem.

All you have to do is to visit the Internet Archive and follow the instructions to get the game patched and playable (as Lara). (Note: you'll also need a controller.)

The current build of Tomb Raider: 10th Anniversary Edition (25th of July, 2006) was about 8 months away from being finished when the development was turned over to the Indiana Jones-build.

While this early alpha version is being restored, you can roam, climb, jump and "hack" through the levels by yourself or watch our gameplay videos below to get the idea about what was Core Design aimed for with this remaster/remake.