Furthermore, the restrictions it was working within somehow enhanced its atmosphere. Those caves and tombs were empty and eerie, Nathan McCree's minimal score remains possibly my favourite ever in a video game, fitting perfectly with the sense of isolated exploration, and Lara - as originally depicted - didn't feel as awkwardly sexualised as she later became.
Obviously, Tomb Raider didn't remain a small, quirky, release; it was the biggest gaming phenomenon of the 90s - and it's still going today. There's a third game in the successful reboot trilogy due later this year, and a new Tomb Raider movie, inspired by the reboot, out now.
Here are eleven things you might not have known about the series' origins.
Though both versions were developed concurrently, the earlier Saturn release gave Core Design time to fix bugs and optimise the graphics for the PS1 - ensuring that the PlayStation version was the definitive Tomb Raider experience.
And, let's face it, hammering the first of many nails in Sega's coffin.
Lara's twin pistols were a nod to the movie Hard Boiled, while her athletic jumping' n' shooting' - and unlikely proportions - were lifted from the MTV animated series Aeon Flux.
In a 1996 interview, Blond hissed: "I was asked to do a very monosyllabic ‘female James Bond‘. My voice is naturally very expressive and I was continually reminded to be monosyllabic and play her in a straight way... I wanted to make her voice sexier and more expressive but they insisted."
Blond was too busy to record dialogue for Tomb Raider 2, and was replaced by actress Judith Gibbons. However, Blond's grunts and groans were retained.
Oddly, and entirely coincidentally, she also presented a show for kids' channel Trouble entitled Room Raider, where she redesigned viewers' bedrooms. Presumably while grunting and groaning... in an entirely non-sexy way, of course.
A tie-in competition allowed Lucozade drinks to visit a real-life Croft Manor, and compete in a Tomb Raider-inspired challenge. The winners of the challenge won a Land Rover used in the movie.
She also featured in the 1998 music video for the song "Männer sind Schweine" (Men Are Pigs) by the German pop-punk band Die Ärzte. A CGI Lara was seen engaging in various attempts to murder the band during a performance of the objectively terrible song.
Ironically, Price was later accused by another real-life Lara model, Lucy Clarkson, of developing a "close friendship" with her husband. It was, curiously, not the first time Clarkson and Price had feuded in public; at a 2006 red carpet event, Clarkson hitched up her skirt, revealing to photographers the words "Jordan kiss my..." written across her buttocks.
Later Laras included Rhona Mitra and Nell McAndrew... who was fired after she posed nude in Playboy. After complaints from Eidos, the magazine was forced to place stickers on the cover to obscure any connection to the Tomb Raider series.
Other famous Derby residents have included Ted "Fit The Best: Everest" Moult, grime MC Dubzy, and the actor Maxwell Caulfield, who provided the voice of James Bond in the video game James Bond 007: Nightfire.
The biography also revealed that she is 5' 9", weighs 9st 4lbs, and her vital statistics are 34D-24-35 (an important consideration for any video game character). Additionally, the biography reveals she has written two books entitled "A Tyrannosaur Is Jawing at My Head" and "Slaying Bigfoot", and that she has a fear of her Auntie's corgi, which has bitten her on several occasions.
This may provide a rationale for why Lara shows little remorse over shooting animals in the head.
Gard left the series following the release of the original game, when he disagreed with Core's vision for Tomb Raider 2, and the way it which the character was being marketed.
He gasps: “What I objected to was the marketing which represented Lara in a way that was nothing like the character. At the time I didn’t like that and it prompted me to want to retain control of characters I created in the future, so that’s why I left."
He went on to create Galleon for the original Xbox, but returned to the franchise for Tomb Raider Underworld, for which he co-wrote the story and directed the cut-scenes.
In 2016, original Tomb Raider level designer Neal Boyd cast doubt on Gard's story, telling Eurogamer: "Toby developed the model to look like his drawings. I knew we'd get flak from people. But he wasn't bothered about that. He was happy with the way she was. I don't know whether he had a thing for big breasts? He was a very secretive guy. He'd never answer a question straight.
"He always claims he slipped on the mouse and made the breasts bigger than he meant to, but how true that is, I don't know."