Tomb Raider on the Macintosh (Part 1)

Welcome to what I hope will be the first in a series of articles about running the Tomb Raider series on Mac and Linux systems. This article originally appeared on Matt's Tomb Raider Blog, and Matt has graciously allowed me to reprint it here.

Something that a number of people may not be aware of is that Tomb Raider: Anniversary was actually released on the Mac. The guys over at Robosoft Technologies are responsible for the port, while Feral Interactive handled the publishing of the game.

Screenshot of Lara in Tomb Raider:
Anniversary for Mac

Now…there are two main reasons why I say that people may not be aware of this. First of all it was never mentioned on the official Tomb Raider site. I had a good look on there and couldn't see it on there anywhere, no mention of it at all. It was like it didn't exist. I contacted someone at Eidos Interactive about this a couple of times and while they seemed to show some interest and said that they would let the appropriate people know, the request to have the information published on the official Tomb Raider site was never actioned. Personally I think thats a bit strange.


Tomb Raider:
Anniversary for
MacintoshThe other reason is that when I visit forums I quite often see posts from people indicating that they aren't even aware the game is available on the Mac… I'm purposefully being vague here. Want to know more? Good, I brought my fact cards along with me today...

• The only Tomb Raider games that were not released for Mac are Legend and Underworld. Even all of the "Gold" games and the Level Editor were released for Macintosh.
• The Tomb Raider Trilogy released for Mac also included all the "Gold" games alongside the main three. Something that was never offered in the PC trilogy.
• Tomb Raider 2 and Chronicles have their very own easter eggs specific to the Mac version.
• Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness apparently has less bugs than the PC version.

I haven't even begun to scratch the surface here, theres a lot more information out there on the web about playing Tomb Raider on the Mac, actually theres an entire website dedicated to Tomb Raider on the Mac, its called MacRaider and it was started by Kerrie Reay back in 1999. Unfortunately Kerrie passed away in 2008, but her web site managed to survive and is now being looked after by Trevor Liddle, who I might add has been doing a brilliant job these past few years.

Now I should probably state my intentions of this post incase there is any confusion. The point behind me making this post is quite simply to better inform people about Tomb Raider on the Mac, thats it! I'm not trying to convert PC users… well except Katie Fleming (deep down I know she wants a Mac ). I'm just trying to spread the word that Macintosh computers can do everything PCs can… even run Tomb Raider.

Now if you would like to find out a whole lot more about Tomb Raider on the Mac then make your way over to MacRaider at http://users.on.net/~macraider.

Also in case anyone is interested, I'm currently replaying Tomb Raider: Anniversary on my MacBook Pro. So far I've made it about half way through "The Lost Valley". I would have been further by now but I took issue with the wolves in Vilcabamba. Happy raiding! –Matt

Continue to Part 2 > > >