| Tomb Raider III | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Developer(s) | Core Design[a] |
| Publisher(s) | Eidos Interactive[b] |
| Producer(s) | Troy Horton |
| Designer(s) | Jamie Morton Richard Morton Andrew Sandham |
| Programmer(s) | Chris Coupe Martin Gibbins |
| Writer(s) | Vicky Arnold |
| Composer(s) | Nathan McCree |
| Series | Tomb Raider |
| Platform(s) | Microsoft Windows PlayStation Mac OS |
| Release | Windows, PlayStationMac OS
|
| Genre(s) | Action-adventure |
| Mode(s) | Single-player |
Tomb Raider III (also known as Tomb Raider III: Adventures of Lara Croft) is an action-adventure video game developed by Core Design and published by Eidos Interactive. It was released for the PlayStation and Microsoft Windows platforms in 1998. Tomb Raider III is the third title in the Tomb Raider series and a sequel to Tomb Raider II. The story of the game follows archaeologist-adventurer Lara Croft as she embarks upon a quest to recover four pieces of a meteorite that are scattered across the world. To progress through the game, the player must complete a series of levels that involve solving puzzles, traversing dangerous locations, and defeating enemies.
Tomb Raider III was built on an upgraded version of the Tomb Raider engine that was used by its predecessors. The engine offers better speed efficiency and new graphical features such as coloured lighting and triangular polygons, allowing developers to achieve greater detail and more complex geometry. The game was designed to be more in line with the puzzle-solving gameplay of the original Tomb Raider as opposed to the more shooting-oriented style of Tomb Raider II.
Accompanied by an extensive marketing campaign, Tomb Raider III was a commercial success, selling around six million copies worldwide. Although the game received generally favourable reviews, it did not fare as well as its predecessors, with critics generally agreeing that the game failed to change the same tried and tested formula. The game's difficult and unforgiving gameplay also received some criticism. Tomb Raider III was ported to Mac OS computers in 1999 and released as a PSOne Classic on the PlayStation Network in 2011. A stand-alone expansion featuring six new levels, titled Tomb Raider III: The Lost Artefact, was released in 2000. A remastered version of the game, alongside The Lost Artefact, was included in Tomb Raider I–III Remastered in 2024.
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