The Man Behind Lara Croft

The real key to Lara's success, says Smith, is that she's the first female protagonist in a field filled with muscle-rippled, machine gun-toting macho caricatures like Duke Nukem or the Terminator. Cartoonish features aside, Lara is intelligent, agile and handy with a pistol or two. "She's strong willed and independent," Smith says. He pauses, then adds, "like the Spice Girls."

Not that Girl Power was much on Smith's mind seven years ago. He was pursuing a successful career selling computer-design systems to firms like Rolls-Royce when his brother Jeremy lured him to Jeremy's small publishing company, Core, which was beginning to move into computer games.

The brothers had many happy memories of playing tabletop arcade machines like Frogger and Centipede in their father's garage. Now they wanted to take the new 3-D environment pioneered in the shooting game Doom and use it for something a little more cerebral, something set in the tombs and catacombs of Egypt. The protagonist was to be a little different too. Says Smith: "As soon as you give a male character guns, he becomes a stereotype. We always knew we wanted a female."

A character called Laura Cruise was sketched out but got the boot because "she sounded too American." When Lara Croft arrived, "we went over the top making her British." The fictional Lara is a graduate of Prince Charles' alma mater, despite the small obstacle that--as Smith points out--the school doesn't admit women.

No matter. The Brit female thing worked. Lara was unusual enough to become an icon, and Tomb Raider was addictive enough to prompt millions of men--and, for the first time, large numbers of women--to spend long nights at the console. Smith, who naively thought he'd seen the last of Tomb Raider, had to spend many more long nights (two years' worth per game) devising enough fiendish traps and puzzles for three sequels.

Could The Last Revelation be the final outing for Smith and Croft? Smith isn't saying. But you get the sense that this married father of three, who eschews the gaming industry's increasingly bright limelight, has become so accustomed to Lara's face--and other parts--that he won't ditch her just yet. "I'm happy to stand in Lara's shadow," he says. And that of her smooth, full-cheeked bottom.