Modder launched the original Tomb Raider on the Game Boyi Advance -apkrig

Archaeologist Lara Croft arrived at Nintendo’s Handheld Game Boy Advance in 2002 as Tomb Raider: The Prophecy. It was just a slightly above-average spin-off, which, in addition to its concept, is very far from classic parts.

But as it turns out, this hardware is enough for the famous original. With a great deal of dexterity. It was proved by the modder Timur Gagiev aka XProger, who demonstrated a functional port of the game, which you would certainly not expect on an age-old pocket console in this form.

According to the developer of the OpenLara engine, a year ago he was not sure whether the GBA would be enough for the game. Thanks to numerous optimizations, however, he managed to do this and entices him to plan further improvements and data savings, so that the whole game will fit on a 32 MB cartridge. Currently, only three levels are available. Although framerate is not yet ideal, the author himself says that he considers the current version to be alpha.

Thanks to the OpenLara engine, it is possible to play Lara Croft’s first adventure on other unusual platforms. In addition to Game Boye Advance, versions for 3DO, PlayStation Vita, 3DS, Switch or the original Xbox are available. This is not the only impressive experiment. In addition to the mentioned ports, XProger also implemented split-screen multiplayer in the original game.

The titles at Game Boy Advance couldn’t boast the best 3D graphics, and this project is undoubtedly one of the most beautiful I’ve ever run on a GBA. When you remember what the port of the original Tomb Raider for N-Gage from 2003 looked like, the GBA version is almost a miracle.