Macenstein

I remember catching my first glimpse of Lara Croft’s pixelated bosom as a young lad at my first E3, in Atlanta. I even more vividly remember the decidedly “smoother” booth girl Eidos had hired to dress as the millionaire playgirl/adventurer – she fit the part quite nicely (no easy feat). I soon became enamored with the virtual Miss Croft (thanks in no small part to the infamous “Nude Raider” patch), and the Tomb Raider franchise in general. Eventually, however, I lost interest in the game sometime after TR3 when the idea of leaving my basement in search of real women seemed somewhat more exciting than maneuvering a virtual one through the rooftops of London, Dick Van Dyke-style.

Well, now that I am married with children (and back in my basement) it seems I may have the opportunity to relive my love affair with Miss Croft, and this time (thanks to 11 year’s worth of graphical advances) Lara is looking a lot more like the Atlanta booth girl than blocky adventurer I accidentally killed thousands of times in the late 90’s.

Above: Lara’s obviously been using the stair master these past 11 years.

Feral Interactive is porting Tomb Raider Anniversary to the Mac (finally). TRA is the updated remake of the original Tomb Raider that I so loved, and if screenshots can believed, the years have been far kinder to Lara than to me. Unfortunately, it looks like the game’s minimum system requirements expressly state that GMA graphics cards are not supported, so that means my new MacBook (despite technically having 144MB of RAM) is right out. Still, playing the game on my MacPro in the basement will bring back all sorts of warm memories – like eating bag after bag of Doritos, playing poker with my other dateless high school buddies, and backing Lara into a corner in an attempt to get the flaky camera to point at her breasts.

Feral is taking pre-orders for the game now, although no word yet on an exact release date, or whether they fixed that camera. Here’s hoping the answers to those questions are “soon” and “no”.

Above: Sweet! Looks like the camera is intact!